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Chapter 48
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Count of Monte Cristo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice, Revenge, and God’s Will
Changes of Identity and Station
Love, Devotion, and Redemption
Debt and Gratitude
The Domestic and the Foreign
Summary
Analysis
In this brief chapter, the Count meets with Haydee, whom he has introduced previously as his slave. The chapter does little to clear up the mystery of Haydee’s living with the Count: for she, too, calls him master and herself his slave, and she says she wishes to meet no one in Paris, simply to go on living in the beautiful environs of the Count’s houses in Paris and Auteuil. But the Count says that Haydee is free to leave whenever she likes. Haydee insists she has only loved two men in her life: her father and the Count. The Count asks that she not speak of her parents to anyone if she does in fact leave the home and mingle in society. At this, Haydee addresses the Count with her continued, if still mysterious, devotion, and then the Count takes his leave for a visit to Maximilien Morrel, and Julie and Emmanuel.
Haydee’s behavior toward the Count becomes one of the central mysteries of the second part of the novel. For although the reader knows a great deal about the Count’s life, we have not been let in on the secret of Haydee’s role in the Count’s household. It appears from this passage that she is deeply indebted to the Count, and was previously deeply indebted to her father—but beyond this the reader is in the dark. The plot involving the Count and Haydee will become more and more important as the novel continues, and as Haydee tells the reader more about her life’s story.
Themes
