The Count of Monte Cristo
Immediately upon the Pharaon's return to Marseilles, young first mate Edmond Dantès stands poised for everything he has earned: command of his ship and marriage to his beloved Mercédès. But his very virtues breed envy. The jealous purser Danglars, the rival suitor Fernand, and an ambitious magistrate conspire to brand him a Bonapartist traitor, and Dantès is buried alive in the island dungeon of the Château d'If. There, a fellow prisoner reveals a hidden fortune. Escaping after fourteen years, Dantès remakes himself as the enigmatic Count of Monte Cristo and returns to reward the faithful and methodically destroy those who betrayed him.
Beneath its sweeping adventure, Dumas's novel is a profound meditation on justice, vengeance, and Providence. It asks whether any man has the right to play God, and whether revenge, however righteous, can ever restore what was lost. Endlessly thrilling, it remains one of literature's greatest stories of betrayal and redemption.
How it begins
Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean were covered with spectators; it is always an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the Pharaon , has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs to an owner of the city. The ship drew on and had safely passed the strait, which some volcanic shock has made between the Calasareigne and Jaros islands; had doubled Pomègue, and approached the harbor under topsails, jib, and spanker, but so slowly and sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which is the forerunner of evil, asked one another what misfortune could have happened on board. However, those experienced in navigation saw plainly that if any accident had occurred, it was not to the vessel herself, for she bore down with all the evidence of being skilfully handled, the anchor a-cockbill, the jib-boom guys already eased off, and standing by the side of the pilot, who was steering the Pharaon towards the narrow entrance of the inner port, was a young man, who, with activity and vigilant eye, watched every motion of the ship, and repeated each direction of the pilot.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.