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Chapter 63
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
Andrea Cavalcanti leaves the party at Auteuil alone, as his “father,” the Major, has his own cab and servants. On his way out the door with his own servant, however, Andrea is stopped by a man dressed as a beggar, revealed to the reader to be none other than Caderousse, who is on the run since murdering La Carconte many years before in the botched scheme with the jeweler. It is revealed that Andrea/Benedetto and Caderousse know each other from the past, in the south of France, when Caderousse was on the lam for his crime and Benedetto for starting the fire that led to his stepmother’s death.
It has been unclear what has happened to Caderousse in the time since he was sentenced to hard labor in a prison colony for the murders of La Carconte and the jeweler. As it turns out, Benedetto/Andrea and Caderousse know each other from the colony, as will be described in detail later. This is another of the novel’s many coincidences, for, of course, Bertuccio (unbeknownst to Caderousse) is the only witness to the murders in the inn so many years ago, when Bertuccio was drenched in the jeweler’s blood.
Themes
Caderousse implies that he will out Benedetto unless the young man supplies him with some amount of his monthly income from the Count. Although Caderousse does not admit to knowing who the Count is exactly, he seems to be aware of the notion that Andrea and the Major are not really related, but that the Count is paying the two of them to pretend to be family. Caderousse promises to visit Andrea at the beginning of every month to exact his blackmail fee of 200 francs. The two men part just after Andrea drops him within the city gates of Paris.
By this point, Caderousse has turned from a mostly passive and diffident man to one more comfortable with active criminal behavior. He extorts Andrea because Caderousse knows that Andrea is enmeshed with one of the wealthiest men in Paris, the Count. And though Caderousse does not know the Count’s true identity, he seems to understand that all of French high society has fallen under the Count’s sway.
Themes
