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Chapter 84
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
When the two men reach the Count, they do not tell him what has happened, although the Count can sense that Albert is out of sorts. At this, the Count suggests that Albert travel with him, this time to Normandy, where he has just bought a house and a boat. Bertuccio has previously arranged for post horses to be available all along the way so the Count can reach his home in eight hours. Albert thinks over this proposal for a while, and at the thought of spending time with his friend the Count by the seaside, he agrees.
To this end, Albert agrees to go away with the Count. Although very little of their time together is described, it is another of the moments when the Count disappears from the narrative for a while. This happened previously when Dantes first came upon the gold of Monte Cristo, and was moving about Marseille in a variety of disguises, paying visits to places he remembered from his youth.
Themes
The Count and Albert set off that night, while Beauchamp stays back in Paris to mind the newspaper for any further news about Fernand. For three days, Albert delights in the hunting and fishing of the Normandy home, and the Count believes that some good is indeed coming to Albert there. But on the third day, one of Mercedes’ footmen reaches Albert at the Normandy home, saying that a piece has run in another newspaper, not run by Beauchamp, clarifying that the “Fernand” of the previous story of the Ali Pasha is indeed Albert’s father. Albert asks the Count and Ali for post-horses right away so he might travel back to Paris and see to his distraught mother, about whom he is deeply worried.
It seems that Albert and Beauchamp cannot prevent the knowledge of Fernand’s deceit from coming out. The preparations the Count has made for his travel are a somewhat curious development in the text. As far as the novel is concerned, this house in Normandy is no longer important, and it appears that the Count has purchased it solely as a retiring-place for Albert – as though the Count had expected precisely this public humiliation of the Morcerf family.
Themes
Literary Devices
