The Count of Monte Cristo Summary & ending explained

On a February morning in 1815, the three-master Pharaon glided into the harbour of Marseille with a young man at her helm and a dead captain in her log.

Edmond Dantès was nineteen. He had brought the ship home himself after fever took Captain Leclère, and when the owner, Monsieur Morrel, climbed aboard, he heard the whole voyage in a few clear sentences.

"You did well, Edmond," Morrel said. "Very well. I think the Pharaon has found her next captain."

Dantès flushed with joy. Behind him, the ship's accountant, Danglars, smiled thinly and said nothing. He had wanted that command for himself.

Dantès ran first to his old father's room, then down to the Catalan village by the sea, where Mercédès was waiting at her door. She was beautiful and fierce and she loved him, and they meant to marry as soon as they could. Her cousin Fernand, who had loved her all his life, watched them from a corner with his fists clenched.

Soon after, under the vine arbour of a tavern called La Réserve, Danglars found Fernand drinking.

"You hate him," Danglars said softly. "So do I. But hatred alone is useless."

He took a pen in his left hand, so no one would know the writing, and wrote a few lines. Dantès, it said, had stopped at the island of Elba, where the exiled Napoleon was held, and now carried a secret letter for the Bonapartists in Paris.

Their neighbour Caderousse, too drunk to stand, laughed that it was all a joke. Danglars crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. When the two of them stumbled off, Fernand picked it up and slipped it into his coat.

The next day, the wedding feast filled La Réserve with laughter. In little more than an hour, the mayor would marry them. Old Dantès glowed. Mercédès could not stop smiling. Edmond raised his glass to the happiest day of his life.

Then came three loud knocks on the door, and a police commissary stepped inside with soldiers at his back.

"Which of you is Edmond Dantès?"