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Chapter 82
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
While Ali goes out in search of a doctor, the Abbe Busoni tends to the mortally wounded Caderousse. Caderousse asks why the Abbe didn’t tell him he could see his accomplice outside, lying in wait to kill him. The Abbe replies that he was waiting for the will of God to be done, and though Caderousse denies that there is anything like God in the world, the Abbe insists that there is, and that it was the Hand of God that resulted in Caderousse’s murder. Caderousse then signs another paper, saying he has been hurt by Benedetto while attempting to burgle the Count, and Caderousse says that this Benedetto would indeed have come to murder the Count if given the opportunity.
The Count, disguised here as the Abbe, learns that both Caderousse and Benedetto (or Andrea) had only blood and spoils on their minds. The Abbe makes sure here, as Dantes/the Count has done throughout the novel, to acquire written proof of a statement, which he can then use against the assailant at a later time. This proof helps the Count to build the moral justification for his revenge, which, he believes, carries out the divine will for vengeance against the aggressor, Caderousse.
Themes
Caderousse wonders who this mad Abbe can be who is more concerned with exacting revenge than with giving relief to a man on the verge of death. Caderousse wonders if he is really an Abbe at all, and in looking more closely at the Count, he realizes he is the same man as Lord Wilmore, whom he has seen from afar back in the days of the prison work-colony. The Count encourages him to go back still further, at which point, on the verge of death, Caderousse realizes it is in fact Edmond Dantes standing above him. And at this realization, Caderousse says that there is in fact a God, that his soul has been damned, and that he will now die—which he promptly does. Ali comes in to find the Abbe praying over the body of the dead man.
At the very moment of his death, Caderousse is the first character in the novel to recognize the Count for who he really is. Caderousse also understands that Dantes is the only man in the world who could be justified, he thinks, in allowing him to die. Thus, despite his years of criminality following the murders of La Carconte and the jeweler, at his dying moment Caderousse reverts to a more morally-aware state, as he was in the beginning of the novel. He knows now that he deserves the punishment that is being inflicted upon him.
Themes
