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Count of Monte Cristo Inquiry

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Brief overview

Villefort's envoy questions Abbe Bussoni and Lord Wilmore about Monte Cristo and hears two opposite accounts.

  1. Two witnesses give two irreconcilable Monte CristosThe Abbe paints a modest, charitable Zaccone with 150,000-200,000 livres a year; Lord Wilmore paints a miserly speculator with a Thessalian mine worth one or two millions.
  2. The Auteuil house is the whole point of the inquiryVillefort's questions begin and end with why the Count bought the house at Auteuil; Bussoni says a lunatic asylum, Wilmore says a hunt for a mineral spring.
  3. The envoy is Villefort himselfThe interviews are conducted in the Prefect's name, but the carriage goes straight back to Villefort's house and the procureur finally sleeps.
Executive Summary AI
  • Chapter 69 of The Count of Monte Cristo opens with Monsieur de Villefort keeping his promise to Madame d'Anglard to find out how the Count discovered the history of the house at Auteuil, writing that same day to Monsieur de Beauville, a former inspector of prisons now high in the police.
  • Two days later the note comes back naming two men who know the Count: Lord Wilmore, a rich English traveller then in Paris, and the Abbe Bussoni, a Sicilian priest of high repute in the East, and Villefort orders the strictest inquiries into both.
  • Calling at the olive-green door by Saint-Sulpice at eight in the evening, the envoy hears from the Abbe that the Count is really Monsieur Zaccone, son of a rich Maltese shipbuilder, that his title was bought, that he possesses only one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand livres per annum rather than the rumoured four millions, that he is a charitable Knight of Jesus Christ with five or six r
  • At ten o'clock in the Rue Fontaine-Saint-Georges, Lord Wilmore, who refuses to speak French and openly calls himself the Count's enemy, tells the opposite story: a boy of ten in the service of an Indian sovereign, taken prisoner and escaped from the Hulks by swimming, a silver mine in Thessaly turned into a mining grant from King Otho worth one or two millions per annum, railway and telegraph spec
  • The carriage returns to Villefort's house and the procureur, though he has learned nothing really satisfactory, sleeps soundly for the first time since the dinner-party at Auteuil.
Key Quote
“Monte Cristo is the name of an estate, or, rather, of a rock, and not a family name.”
— Abbe Bussoni
Key Quote
“Exactly. He is a Quaker, with the exception of the peculiar dress.”
— Abbe Bussoni
Key Quote
“Yes. Every one who knows him is his friend.”
— Abbe Bussoni

Transcript

0:00 THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO Toronto, Ontario, September 2006.
0:31 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandra Dumas.
0:35 Chapter 69. The Inquiry.
0:41 Monsieur de Villefoyle kept the promise he had made to Madame d'Anglard to endeavour to find out how the Count of Monte-Cristo had discovered
0:47 the history of the house at Auteuil. He wrote the same day for the required information to
0:54 Monsieur de Beauville, who, from having been an inspector of prisons, was promoted to a high
1:00 office in the police, and the latter begged for two days' time to ascertain exactly
1:07 who would be most likely to give him full particulars.
1:13 At the end of the second day, M. de Villefort received the following note.
1:19 The person called the Count of Monte Cristo is an intimate acquaintance of Lord Wilmore, a rich foreigner,
1:26 who is sometimes seen in Paris, and who is there at this moment. He is also known to the Abbe
1:33 Bussoni, a Sicilian priest, of high repute in the East, where he has done much good.
1:40 Monsieur de Villefort replied by ordering the strictest inquiries to be made respecting these two persons.
1:48 His orders were executed, and the following evening he received these details.
1:53 The Abbe, who was in Paris only for a month, inhabited a small, two-storied house behind Saint-Sulpice.
2:02 There were two rooms on each floor, and he was the only tenant.
2:07 The two lower rooms consisted of a dining-room, with a table, chairs, and sideboard of walnut,
2:13 and a wainscoted parlor, without ornaments, carpet, or timepiece.
2:20 It was evident that the Abbe limited himself to objects of strict necessity.
2:26 He preferred to use the sitting-room upstairs, which was more a library than parlor,
2:31 and was furnished with theological books and parchments,
2:35 in which he delighted to bury himself for months at a time, according to his valet de chambre.
2:42 His valet looked at the visitors through a sort of wicket,
2:45 and if their faces were unknown to him or displeased him, he replied that the abbé was
2:52 not in Paris, an answer which satisfied most persons, because the abbé was known to be a
2:58 great traveller. Besides, whether at home or not, whether in Paris or Cairo, "'the Abbe always left something to give away,
3:08 "'which the valet distributed through this wicket in his master's name.
3:13 "'The other room near the library was a bedroom,
3:17 "'a bed without curtains, four armchairs and a couch,
3:21 "'covered with yellow Utrecht velvet,
3:24 "'composed with a prédieu all its furniture.
3:29 Lord Wilmore resided in Rue Fontaine, Saint-Georges. He was one of those English tourists
3:35 who consume a large fortune in travelling. He hired the apartment in which he lived furnished,
3:42 passed only a few hours in the day there, and rarely slept there.
3:47 One of his peculiarities was never to speak a word of French, which he, however, wrote with
3:53 great facility. The day after this important information had been given to the king's attorney,
4:00 a man alighted from a carriage at the corner of the Rue Farou, and rapping at an olive-green door, asked if the Abbé Boussoni were within.
4:11 No, he went out early this morning, replied the valet.
4:16 I might not always be content with that answer, replied the visitor, for I come from one to whom everyone must be at home.
4:24 But have the kindness to give the Abbe Bussoni.

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