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Chapter 113
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Count of Monte Cristo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice, Revenge, and God’s Will
Changes of Identity and Station
Love, Devotion, and Redemption
Debt and Gratitude
The Domestic and the Foreign
Summary
Analysis
The narrative turns to Danglars, who has fled to Rome and drawn on the credit of Thomson and French, where Peppino, friend of the Count’s, works. Danglars believes he has tricked that bank into giving him 5 million francs. He takes a stagecoach out into the countryside and begins wondering how he will spend and invest this newfound wealth as a way of regaining his social position.
Amazingly, Danglars has made it as far as Rome, and has not yet abandoned hope that he might be able to make back at least some of the money he’s lost. But this allows for the return of some of the most dread characters introduced in the novel to this point: the bandits of the Roman underworld.
Themes
But in the night, Danglars realizes that his coach has been overtaken and that Peppino has drawn him along back to Rome, to the underground fortress of a bandit Luigi Vampa. Danglars presumes that, because he only has banknotes on him and no gold, they will ransom him, which Danglars can pay in the morning and be off with most of the rest of his 5 million francs. He falls asleep in the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian with Vampa.
In another coincidence, Danglars winds up in the very same dungeon where Albert was once kept many months back. And although Albert was rescued by the Count before Vampa had his way with him, Danglars will not prove to be so lucky – he will not have the Count to intercede on his behalf.
Themes
