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Count of Monte Cristo: Moral Family

18:37 recording · EN · 1 speaker

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Brief overview

Monte Cristo visits the Morrel family and hears them venerate the unknown benefactor who is himself.

  1. The Morrels live on refused fortuneThey turned down three hundred thousand francs for the family name and kept only twenty-five thousand francs a year.
  2. A purse kept as a relicThe letter signed Sinbad the Sailor and a hundred-thousand-franc diamond sit under a crystal cover as family treasures.
  3. The benefactor stands in the roomMonte Cristo hears himself described as an angel and nearly betrays his emotion twice.
Executive Summary AI
  • The Count of Monte Cristo arrives at No. 7 in the Rue Meslet, where the one-eyed concierge Cocles fails to recognise him after nine years, and Maximilian Moral greets him warmly at the gate of the modest house Emmanuel bought and half let out.
  • Maximilian explains that his sister and brother-in-law live on twenty-five thousand francs a year: Monsieur Moral left five hundred thousand francs divided between the two children, and Emmanuel laboured six years to amass two hundred fifty thousand francs of his own.
  • On the day the last rouleau of a hundred francs completed that sum, Emmanuel proposed selling the house to M. Delaunay for three hundred thousand francs; Julie refused, saying the house of Moral can only be carried on by a Moral, and they shut the office within a quarter of an hour, turning away a merchant worth fifteen thousand francs of clear profit.
  • In the salon Maximilian shows the Count their most precious family treasures under a crystal cover: a silken purse holding the letter signed Sinbad the Sailor, written to Julie on the 5th of September, and the diamond estimated at a hundred thousand francs that served as her dowry, left by the unknown man who called on their father on the 5th of June, 1829.
  • When Monte Cristo suggests the benefactor was an eccentric Englishman, Lord Wilmore, whom he left at Palermo two years before, Maximilian recalls that their dying father named Edmond Dante's instead, and the Count, turning alarmingly pale, hurries away after asking leave to visit again.
Key Quote
“Oh, yes, I assure you, Count, they want nothing that can render them happy.”
— Maximilian
Key Quote
“Emmanuel returned my sister, the house of Moral can only be carried on by a Moral.”
— Julie
Key Quote
“'A quarter of an hour,' was the reply.”
— Narrator

Transcript

0:00 THE COUNT OF MONTECRISTO by Alexander Dimas.
0:13 CHAPTER FIFTY.
0:14 THE MORAL FAMILY.
0:16 In a very few minutes the Count reached No. 7 in the Rue Meslet.
0:20 The house was of white stone, and in a small court before it were two small beds full of
0:24 beautiful flowers. In the concierge that opened the gate the Count recognized Cockels, but as he
0:31 had but one eye, and that eye had become somewhat dim in the course of nine years, Cockels did not
0:36 recognize the Count. The carriages that drove up to the door were compelled to turn, to avoid a
0:42 fountain that played in a basin of rock-work, an ornament that
0:46 had excited the jealousy of the whole quarter, and had gained for the place the appellation of
0:50 the Little Versailles. It is needless to add that there were gold and silver fish in the basin.
0:56 The house, with kitchens and cellars below, had above the ground floor two stories and attics.
1:03 The whole of the property, consisting of an immense workshop,
1:06 two pavilions at the bottom of the garden, and the garden itself, had been purchased by Emmanuel,
1:11 who had seen at a glance that he could make of it a profitable speculation. He had reserved the
1:16 house and half the garden, and building a wall between the garden and the workshops, had let
1:21 them upon lease with the pavilions at the bottom of the garden so that for a trifling sum he was as well lodged and as perfectly shut out from observation as the inhabitants of the finest mansion in the faubourg saint-germain
1:33 the breakfast-room was finished in oak the salon in mahogany and the furnishings were of blue velvet the bedroom was in citron wood and green damask there There was a study for Emmanuel, who never studied,
1:46 and a music room for Julie, who never played. The whole of the second story was set apart for
1:51 Maximilian. It was precisely similar to his sister's apartments, except that for the breakfast
1:56 parlor he had a billiard room, where he received his friends. He was superintending the grooming
2:01 of his horse, and smoking his cigar at the entrance of the garden, when the Count's carriage stopped at the gate. Coccles opened the gate, and Baptisteine,
2:10 springing from the box, inquired whether Monsieur and Madame Herbeau, and Monsieur Maximilien Moral,
2:15 would see His Excellency the Count of Monte Cristo.
2:17 The Count of Monte Cristo! cried Moral, throwing away his cigar and hastening to the carriage.
2:22 I should think we would see him. Ah, a thousand thanks,
2:25 Count, for not having forgotten your promise." And the young officer shook the Count's hand so
2:30 warmly that Monte Cristo could not be mistaken as to the sincerity of his joy, and he saw that
2:36 he had been expected with impatience, and was received with pleasure.
2:40 "'Come, come,' said Maximilian. I will serve as your guide guide such a man as you are ought not to be introduced by a servant my sister is in the garden plucking the dead roses my brother is reading his two papers the press and the debates
2:53 within six steps of her for wherever you see madame herbeau you have only to look within a circle of four yards and you will find monsieur emmanuel and reciprocally as they say at the Polytechnic school.
3:09 At the sound of their steps, a young woman of twenty to five-and-twenty, dressed in a silk morning-gown, and busily engaged in plucking the dead leaves off a noisette rose-tree,
3:15 raised her head.
3:16 This was Julie, who had become, as the clerk of the House of Thompson and French had predicted,
3:21 Madame Emmanuel Herbeau.
3:23 She uttered a cry of surprise at the sight of a
3:25 stranger, and Maximilian began to laugh. Don't disturb yourself, Julie, said he. The count has
3:31 only been two or three days in Paris, but he already knows what a fashionable woman of the
3:35 Marais is, and if he does not, you will show him. Ah, monsieur, returned Julie, it is treason in my
3:40 brother to bring you thus, but he never has any regard for his poor sister. Penelon! Penelon! An old man, who was digging busily at one of the beds, stuck his spade in

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