The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
CII
VALENTINE
1. Germain Pilon’s three Graces: The group, The Three Graces, was commissioned from the sculptor Germain Pilon (1528–90) to support the funerary urn of King Henri II. It is now in the Louvre.
CIV
THE SIGNATURE OF BARON DANGLARS
1. Robert Macaire… Frédérick: ‘Robert Macaire’ was the central character in Antier, Saint-Amant and Paulyanthe’s melodrama, L’Auberge des Adrets (1823) and its sequel Robert Macaire (1834). It was famously played by Frédérick Lemaître (1800–76), who features in this role in Marcel Carné’s film, Les Enfants du paradis (played by Pierre Brasseur).
CV
THE PÈRE LACHAISE CEMETERY
1. Héloïse and Abélard: A monument to the twelfth-century lovers, made to cover their tomb after Héloïse’s death in 1164, was eventually transferred to the Père Lachaise cemetery in the early nineteenth century.
2. Malherbe… du Périer: A celebrated poem to console du Périer on the death of his daughter, by François de Malherbe (1555–1628).
3. the daughter of Jairus: The story of how Jesus resurrected the daughter of Jairus is told in three gospels (Matthew 19: 18–26; Mark 5: 22–43; and Luke 8: 40–56). The story of Jesus walking on the water is in Matthew, 14: 28–9.
CVI
THE SHARE-OUT
1. Saint-Germain-des-Prés: Chapter XCI puts the house in the Rue des Saint-Pères (which is in the district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés).
2. Asmodée… Le Sage: In Le Sage’s play, Le Diable boiteux (1707).
3. Lamoricière… Changarnier… Bedeau: Christophe-Louis-Léon Juchault de Lamoricière (1806–65), Nicholas-Anne-Théodule Changarnier (1793–1877) and Marie-Alphonse Bedeau (1804–63) were officers who distinguished themselves in the conquest of Algeria.
CVII
THE LIONS’ PIT
1. La Force: The building, originally a thirteenth-century royal mansion, became a prison in 1782, housed political prisoners during the Revolution and was demolished in 1850.
2. Barrière Saint-Jacques: After 1832, the place where executions were carried out.
3. quos ego: ‘You, whom I…’ the start of Neptune’s reprimand to the disobedient winds in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book II, l. 135.
4. as Monsieur Racine says: In his play Phèdre, Act I, Scene 3.
CVIII
THE JUDGE
1. Tarquin: Tarquin the Proud (534–510 BC), King of Rome, who indicated to his son, Tarquinius Sextus, how he wanted him to treat the leading citizens of the beseiged town of Gabii by knocking the heads off some flowers.
CIX
THE ASSIZES
1. Saint-Simon: Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755) was the celebrated author of memoirs on the court of Louis XIV. The reference has not been traced, and could be an invention of Dumas’.
CXI
EXPIATION
1. a shirt of Nessus: The garment, poisoned with the blood of the centaur Nessus, which caused the death of Hercules.
2. Titans… Ajax… at the gods: In Greek mythology, the Titans were giants who challenged the gods. Ajax, son of Oileus, was saved from drowning and boasted that he had survived without the help of the gods; for this impiety, Neptune cast him back into the water.
CXII
DEPARTURE
1. Perrault’s stories: Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was the author of the original versions of many of the best-known fairy-tales. In this case the reference is to Sleeping Beauty.
CXIII
THE PAST
1. Since the July Revolution: In 1830. See note 1 to Chapter XLVIII.
2. Mirabeau’s imprisonment: See note 1 to Chapter VIII.
3. like Hamlet: Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1.
4. Ganymede: A Trojan youth who ‘became the cup-bearer of the gods in the place of Hebe. Some say that he was carried away by an eagle, to satisfy the shameful and unnatural desires of Jupiter’ (Lemprière, Classical Dictionary).
CXIV
PEPPINO
1. Figaro’s ‘goddam’: In Beaumarchais’Le Mariage de Figaro, Act III, Scene 5.
2. Marius and the Gracchi: Gaius Marius (155–86 BC) was a Roman general; the two Gracchi were political reformers who tried to redistribute wealth, but were murdered successively in 133 BC and 121 BC. Dumas seems to be using the names simply as representative early citizens of Rome.
3. morra: A game in which one player tries to shout out the number of fingers shown on the hand of the other, who quickly raises and lowers them.
4. Circus of Caracalla: The baths and circus of the Emperor Caracalla (188–217) still survive on the outskirts of Rome.
CXV
LUIGI VAMPA’S BILL OF FARE
1. sauces Robert: An onion sauce which Dumas, in his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine, describes as highly appetizing, as well as highly flavoured.
2. the barrel of the Danaids: The fifty daughters of the king of Argos were betrothed to the fifty sons of Aegyptus, but their father, to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by one of his sons-in-law, made them promise to murder their husbands. They were condemned to spend eternity in hell filling barrels full of holes.
CXVI
THE PARDON
1. Harpagon: The central character in Molière’s play L’Avare.
CXVII
OCTOBER THE FIFTH
1. Calypso… Telemachus: In Fénélon’s novel Télémaque, Calypso welcomes the hero to her island and seems in effect to be telling him to slip into something more comfortable.
* In English.
† If at six in the morning the four thousand piastres are not in my hands, by seven o’clock Vicomte Albert de Morcerf will have ceased to exist.
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo