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Danglars continues bargaining his money, thousands by thousands, so that he might eat in the prison for five days. The Count of Monte Cristo finally appears with Vampa when Danglars is down to his last 50,000 francs, and the Count says that he is now pardoning Danglars—and that Villefort and Fernand were not so lucky, as the first is now mad with grief, and the second is dead by suicide. The Count announces that he is actually Edmond Dantes, and that Danglars’ utter financial ruin is for the sake of punishment, but the Count allows Danglars to start his life anew somewhere else upon release by Vampa. He also states that the 5 million francs “paid out” to the bandits have been given to the hospice account of Boville, from which Danglars first drew them under criminal circumstances in Rome.

The Count does indeed return, though not so much to save Danglars as to make sure that his punishment reaches a non-lethal conclusion. The Count does want Danglars to lose all his money, and he wants to be sure that the money Vampa has taken is indeed used for charitable ends – it is returned to Boville. But the Count does not want Danglars to die, in part, the reader intuits, because he has had enough of death in the preceding days, weeks, and months. This shows that, though he could exact even more damning revenge on Danglars by killing him, the Count has chosen not to – he has placed a limit on his desire for vengeance.

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The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo: Chapter 116 Summary & Analysis