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Portrait of the Countess

28:06 recording · EN · 5 speakers

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Brief overview

Monte Cristo visits the Morcerf home, where Mercedes' portrait and her unease hint at a shared past.

  1. The portrait is the hinge of the visitMonte Cristo takes three rapid steps and stops before the Catalan portrait, pale and heaving, before Albert reveals it is his mother.
  2. Morcerf's honours are read off his coat and armsLegion of Honour, Order of the Saviour and Grand Cross of Charles III mark service in Greece and Spain, while the blazon carries the family back to the thirteenth century.
  3. Mercedes suspects what Albert cannot seeShe asks whether the Count is really what he appears and fixes on his age, while Albert answers with Byronic admiration and no misgiving.
Executive Summary AI
  • Albert leads the Count of Monte Cristo through his apartments, his atelier of old cabinets, Japanese porcelain and Venetian glass, then the salon of modern works by Dupre, Delacroix, Boulanger, Diaz and Giraud, all of which the Count names instantly without reading a signature.
  • In the bedchamber the Count stops before a portrait by Leopold Robert of a woman of five or six and twenty in Catalan fisherman's costume, and Albert explains it is his mother, painted six or eight years ago and looking as she was in 1830, a picture his father disliked so much that it was moved here, where she rarely looks at it without weeping.
  • Presented to the Count of Morcerf, a general of forty to forty-five who seems fifty, Monte Cristo hears that he was made a peer at the restoration, served his first campaign under Marshal Beaumont, and after the revolution of July hung up his sword for politics, industry and the useful arts, having served twenty years.
  • Mercedes enters pale and motionless, having heard the visitor's last words, and thanks him with the majesty of a queen for saving her son's life, while Monte Cristo, even paler than she, calls it a simple deed of humanity.
  • Alone with Albert afterwards, Mercedes presses him on who the Count really is and what his age is; Albert answers thirty-five or thirty-six, calls him one of Byron's heroes and possibly a lord of smugglers, and leaves her asleep, certain the man will create a sensation in Paris.
Key Quote
“she it is whom you see here. She had her portrait painted thus six or eight years ago.”
— Albert
Key Quote
“the picture seems to have a malign influence for my mother rarely comes here without looking at it and still more rarely does she look at it without weeping”
— Albert
Key Quote
“Made a peer at the restoration, I served the first campaign under the orders of Marshal Beaumont.”
— Count of Morcerf

Transcript

0:00 THE COUNT OF MONTECRISTO by Alexander Dumas. the count of monte-cristo by a. You, who are accustomed to the palaces
0:46 of Italy, can amuse yourself by calculating in how many square feet a young man, who is not the
0:52 worst lodged in Paris, can live. As we pass from one room to another, I will open the windows to
0:57 let you breathe. Monte Cristo had already seen the breakfast room and the salon on the ground floor.
1:03 Albert led him first to his atelier, which
1:06 was, as we have said, his favorite apartment. Monte Cristo quickly appreciated all that Albert
1:11 had collected here. Old cabinets, Japanese porcelain, oriental stuffs, Venetian glass,
1:17 arms from all parts of the world. Everything was familiar to him, and at the first glance he
1:23 recognized their date, their country, and their origin. Orsurf had expected he should be the guide. On the contrary, it was he who, under the
1:31 Count's guidance, followed a course of archaeology, mineralogy, and natural history. They descended to
1:38 the first floor. Albert led his guests into the salon. The salon was filled with works of modern artists. There was landscapes by Dupre,
1:47 with their long reeds and tall trees, their lowing oxen and marvelous skies, Delacroix's
1:53 Arabian cavaliers, with their long white burnouses, their shining belts, their damasked arms, their
1:59 horses who tore each other with their teeth while their riders contended fiercely with their
2:03 maces, Aquarelles
2:05 of Boulanger, representing Notre-Dame de Paris, with that vigor that makes the artist the rival
2:10 of the poet. There were paintings by Diaz, who makes his flowers more beautiful than flowers,
2:16 his suns more brilliant than the sun. Designs by de Camp, as vividly colored as those of Salvatore
2:21 Rosa, but more poetic. Pastels by Giraud and Moulet, representing
2:27 children like angels and women with the features of a virgin, sketches torn from the album of
2:33 Dauzette's, travels in the east. That had been made in a few seconds on the saddle of Camel,
2:39 or beneath the dome of a mosque. In a word, all that modern art can give in exchange and
2:44 as recompense for the art,
2:46 lost and gone with ages long since past. Albert expected to have something new this time to show
2:51 to the traveller, but to his great surprise the latter, without seeking for the signatures,
2:57 many of which indeed were only initials, named instantly the author of every picture in such a
3:02 manner that it was easy to see that each name was not only
3:06 known to him, but that each style associated with it had been appreciated and studied by him.
3:11 From the salon they passed into the bedchamber. It was a model of taste and simple elegance,
3:17 a single portrait signed by Leopold Robert, shown in its carved and gilded frame.
3:22 This portrait attracted the Count of Monte Cristo's attention, for he made three rapid steps in the chamber, and stopped suddenly before it. It was
3:31 the portrait of a young woman of five or six and twenty, with a dark complexion and light and
3:36 lustrous eyes, veiled beneath long lashes. She wore the picturesque costume of the Catalan
3:42 fisherman-woman, a red and black bodice and gold pins in
3:45 her hair. She was looking at the sea, and her form was outlined on the blue ocean and sky.
3:51 The light was so faint in the room that Albert did not perceive the pallor that spread itself
3:56 over the Count's visage, or the nervous heaving of his chest and shoulders.
4:01 Silence prevailed for an instant, during which Mont cristo gazed intently on the picture you have there a most charming mistress vicomte said the count in a perfectly calm tone and this costume a ball costume doubtless becomes her admirably
4:16 ah monsieur returned albert i would never forgive you this mistake if you had seen another picture beside this. You do not know my mother,
4:29 she it is whom you see here. She had her portrait painted thus six or eight years ago.

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