0:00 THE COUNT OF MONTY CRISTO by ALEXANDRA DUMAS. Clark Bell, Tucson, Arizona, October 2007.
0:27 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
0:31 Chapter 74.
0:33 The Villefort Family Vault.
0:38 Chapter 74.
0:41 The Villefort Family Vault. THE VILFOUR FAMILY VAULT Two days after, a considerable crowd was assembled towards ten o'clock in the morning around
0:51 the door of Monsieur de Villefort's house, and a long file of morning coaches and private
0:58 carriages extended along the Faubourg Saint-Honoré rue de la pepinire among them was one of a very singular form which appeared to have come from a distance it was a kind of covered wagon painted carriage contained the corpse of the Marquis de
1:27 Saint-Morin, and that those who had come thinking to attend one funeral would follow two. Their
1:34 number was great. The Marquis de Saint-Morin, one of the most zealous and faithful dignitaries of
1:41 Louis XVIII. and King Charles X., had preserved a great number of friends and these added to the personages whom the usages of society gave villefort a claim on formed a considerable body permission obtained that the two funerals should take place at the same time. A second hearse,
2:07 decked with the same funereal pomp, was brought to M. de Villefort's door, and the coffin removed
2:14 into it from the post-wagon. The two bodies were to be interred in the cemetery of Père Lachaise,
2:21 where M. de Villefort had long since had a tomb prepared for the reception of
2:27 his family. The remains of poor Renée were already deposited there, and now, after ten years of
2:35 separation, her father and mother were to be reunited with her. The Parisians, always curious,
2:42 always affected by funereal display, looked with religious silence while the splendid procession accompanied to their last abode two of the number of the morning coaches, Beauchamp, Debray, and Chateau-Renard were
3:07 talking of the very sudden death of the Marchioness.
3:10 "'I saw Madame de Saint-Morin only last year in Marseilles, when I was coming back from Algiers,'
3:18 said Chateau-Renard. She looked like a woman destined to live to be a hundred years old,
3:23 from her apparent sound health and
3:25 great activity of mind and body. How old was she?
3:31 Franz assured me, replied Albert, that she was sixty-six years old. But she had not died of
3:37 old age, but of grief. It appears that since the death of the marquis, which affected her very deeply, she has not completely
3:45 recovered her reason.
3:48 But of what disease, then, did she die? asked Debray.
3:52 It is said to have been a congestion of the brain, or apoplexy, which is the same thing,
3:57 is it not?
3:58 Nearly.
4:00 It is difficult to believe that it was apoplexy, said Beauchamp. Madame de Saint-Morin, whom I once saw, was short, of slender form, and of a much more
4:11 nervous than sanguine temperament. Grief could hardly produce apoplexy in such a constitution
4:17 as that of Madame de Saint-Morin. At any rate, said Albert, whatever disease or doctor may have killed her,
4:27 M. de Villefort, or rather Mlle. Valentin, or still rather our friend Franz,
4:33 inherits a magnificent fortune, amounting, I believe, to eighty thousand livres per annum.
4:39 And this fortune will be doubled at the death of the old Jacobin Nortier.
4:54 That is a tenacious old grandfather, said Beauchamp. Tenacchem propositi virum. I think he must have made an agreement with death to outlive all his heirs, and he appears likely
5:00 to succeed. He resembles the old conventionalist of ninety-three, who said to Napoleon in 1814,
5:08 You bend because your empire is a young stem, weakened by rapid growth. Take the republic for
5:16 a tutor. Let us return with renewed strength to the battlefield, and I promise you five hundred thousand soldiers, another Marengo, and a second
5:27 Austerlitz. Ideas do not become extinct, sire. They slumber sometimes, but only revive the stronger
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