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Chapter 98
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 Baroness Danglars, unsure what to do with herself and believing that Eugenie and Danglars are both locked in their rooms, first goes to visit Debray. But she finds him out at the club, and so later that day she goes instead to the Villefort home, where she is greeted with suspicion by the servants before finally being allowed into Villefort’s study. There, the two old friends and former lovers speak to each other about Benedetto, though they do not know the truth of that man’s identity and relation to them.
Baroness Danglars and Villefort are still connected to one another, and indeed appear to care for one another, based on the events that befell them so many years ago. Here, however, they are unsure of what to do next, for it seems that the hands of fate are upon them, making it so that their perfectly-ordered lives are falling to pieces before their eyes.
Themes
Literary Devices
Nevertheless, the Baroness pleads her case on behalf of Benedetto, saying that, if he is a murderer, he is also deserving of some mercy on behalf of the law. But Villefort says he can do no such thing, that he must try Benedetto for his crimes as an agent of the law, and that Benedetto must answer for what he has done wrong—that it is not for men to get in the way of divine, moral ruling. At this, a servant comes in saying that Benedetto/Andrea has been captured in an inn on the road to Belgium, and that he is being brought back to Paris to be put in jail, awaiting trial.
Villefort seems to believe that, despite the chaos in his own home, he must still attempt to carry out his job to the best of his ability. This means, of course, trying Benedetto, who is a criminal and who was posing under a false identity in order to win the hand of Eugenie Danglars. But both the Baroness and Villefort appear to sense that this trial could have disastrous consequences for them, even if they’re not quite sure what those consequences might be.
Themes
