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Count of Monte Cristo: Toxocology

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Brief overview

Monte Cristo teaches Madame de Villefort how poison kills untraceably, and she listens with dangerous eagerness.

  1. Poison as an art, not a crimeMonte Cristo argues the clumsy buyer of arsenic is caught at once, while the real savant leaves justice nothing to learn.
  2. Immunity is built one milligram at a timeFollowing Mithridates, he says he habituated himself to poison and so survived attempts at Naples, Palermo and Smyrna.
  3. Madame de Villefort listens too closelyHer eyes sparkle, she keeps returning to the subject, and the Count leaves certain the seed sown will not fall on barren ground.
Executive Summary AI
  • The Count of Monte Cristo calls on Madame de Villefort to return her husband's visit, meeting her spoiled son Edward and her stepdaughter Valentine, a graceful girl of nineteen who seems melancholy and has been crying.
  • He reminds Madame de Villefort that they met two years earlier at Perugia, on Corpus Christi Day in the garden of the Hotel de Post, where he passed for a physician and they discussed the famous Aquatifana.
  • Following King Mithridates, he explains how a person can take a milligram of brucine the first day and increase daily until, after a month, he can drink from the same carafe and kill his companion without harm to himself.
  • He recounts the Abbe Adelmonte's experiments in Sicily: a cabbage watered with arsenic kills a rabbit, the rabbit's entrails a hen, the hen a vulture, the vulture the fish in a pond, until a guest is poisoned at the fifth remove and doctors declare a tumour on the liver or typhoid fever.
  • Before leaving for the opera he offers her his elixir, warning that one drop restores life while five or six drops kill terribly and leave no taste in a glass of wine; next morning he sends the prescription as promised.
Key Quote
“But I have a passion for the occult sciences, which speak to the imagination like poetry, and are reducible to figures like an algebraic equation.”
— Madame de Villefort
Key Quote
“That man was poisoned three weeks ago.”
— Monte Cristo
Key Quote
“Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy.”
— Monte Cristo

Transcript

0:00 CHAPTER LIII. TOXICOLOGY.
0:19 It was really the Count of Monte Cristo who had just arrived at Madame de Villillefort's for the purpose of returning the procurer's visit. And at his name, as may be easily imagined, the whole house
0:31 was in confusion. Madame de Villefort, who was alone in her drawing-room when the Count was
0:36 announced, desired that her son might be brought thither, instantly to renew his thanks to the
0:42 Count. And Edward, who heard this great personage talked of
0:45 for two whole days, made all possible haste to come to him, not from obedience to his mother,
0:51 or out of any feeling of gratitude to the count, but from sheer curiosity, and that some chance
0:57 remark might give him the opportunity for making one of the impertinent speeches which made his
1:02 mother say, Oh, that naughty child! But I can't be severe with
1:06 him. He is really so bright. After the usual civilities, the Count inquired after Monsieur
1:11 de Villefort. My husband dines with a Chancellor, replied the young lady. He has just gone, and I
1:18 am sure he'll be exceedingly sorry not to have had the pleasure of seeing you before he went.
1:23 Two visitors who were there when the Count arrived,
1:25 having gazed at him with all their eyes, retired after that reasonable delay which politeness
1:31 admits and curiosity requires. What is your sister Valentine doing? inquired Madame de Villefort of
1:37 Edward. Tell someone to bid her come here, that I may have the honor of introducing her to the
1:43 Count. You have a daughter, then, Madame? inquired the Count. Very young, I presume?
1:49 The daughter of Monsieur de Villefort, by his first marriage, replied the young wife,
1:53 a fine, well-grown girl. But melancholy, interrupted Master Edward,
1:58 snatching the feathers out of the tail of a splendid parakeet that was screaming on its
2:02 gilded perch, in order to make a plume for his hat.
2:07 Madame de Villefort merely cried, Be still, Edward! She then added, This young madcap is,
2:12 however, very nearly right, and merely re-echoes what he has heard me say with pain a hundred
2:17 times. For Mademoiselle de Villefort is, in spite of all we can do to rouse her, of a melancholy
2:23 disposition and taciturn habit,
2:31 which frequently injure the effect of her beauty. But what detains her? Go, Edward, and see.
2:36 Because they are looking for her where she is not to be found.
2:42 And where are they looking for her? With Grandpa Pontnortier. And do you think she is not there?
2:47 No, no, no, no, no, she is not there,' replied Edward, singing his words.
2:51 "'And where is she, then? If you know, why don't you tell?' "'She is under the big chestnut tree,' replied the spoiled brat, as he gave, in spite of his mother's commands, live flies to the parrot, which seemed keenly to relish such fare. Madame de Villefort stretched out her hand to ring, intending to direct her
3:06 waiting-maid to the spot where she would find Valentine, when the young lady herself entered
3:10 the apartment. She appeared much dejected, and any person who considered her attentively might
3:16 have observed the traces of recent tears in her eyes. Valentine, whom we have in the rapid march
3:22 of our narrative presented to our readers without formally introducing her, was a tall and graceful girl of nineteen, with bright chestnut hair, deep blue
3:31 eyes, and that reposeful air of quiet distinction which characterized her mother. Her white and
3:38 slender fingers, her pearly neck, her cheeks tinted with varying hues, reminded one of the
3:44 lovely English women who have been so poetically compared in their manner to the gracefulness of a swan.
3:51 She entered the apartment, and seeing near her stepmother the stranger of whom she had already heard so much, saluted him without any girlish awkwardness, or even lowering her eyes.
4:02 And with an elegance that redoubled the Count's attention. He rose to
4:06 return the salutation. Mademoiselle de Villefort, my daughter-in-law, said Madame de Villefort to

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