The Count of Monte Cristo

** Characters:

• Edmond Dantès - our hero
• Old Dantès - Edmond’s Father
• Mercedes - his Edmond’s beloved beautiful Catalan
• Fernand – Catalan dude in love with Mercedes hates Dantès b/c envy
• Caderousse – Neighbor of Old Dantès – dislikes Edmond b/c…?
• Danglars – The supercargo on the Pharaon – hates Edmond b/c envy?

• “A lovely young girl with jet-black hair and the velvet eyes of a gazelle, was standing, leaning against an inner wall, rubbing an innocent sprig of heather between slender fingers like those on a classical statue, and pulling off the flowers, the remains of which were already strewn across the floor. At the same time, her arms, naked to the elbow, arms that were tanned but otherwise seemed modelled on those of the Venus of Arles, trembled with a sort of feverish impatience, and she was tapping the ground with her supple, well-made foot, revealing a leg that was shapely, bold and proud, but imprisoned in a red cotton stocking patterned in grey and blue lozenges”

A young and beautiful girl, with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the gazelles, was leaning with her back against the wainscot, rubbing in her slender fingers, moulded after the antique style, a bunch of heath-blossoms, the flowers of which she was picking off and strewing on the floor; her arms bare to the elbow, tanned, and resembling those of the Venus at Arles, moved with a kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with her pliant and well-formed foot so as to display the pure and full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton stocking with grey and blue clocks.

• “Come on, come on,’ Danglars muttered. ‘I think that the matter is properly under way now, and all we have to do is to let it take its course.”

• “Why, then, they shall be breached,’ said M. de Salvieux. ‘Was he himself so scrupulous, when it came to shooting the poor Duc d’Enghien?’8”

• Villefort swears he will be pityless to his mom(?) but hints to his fiance that he will be merciful.

• “In reality, apart from the memory of his father’s choice of political allegiance (which, if he did not himself completely renounce it, might affect his own career), Gérard de Villefort was at that moment as happy as it is possible for a man to be. At the age of twenty-six, already wealthy in his own right, he held a high office in the legal profession; and he was to marry a beautiful young woman whom he loved, not with passion, but reasonably, as a deputy crown prosecutor may love.”

• This is ominous tho: ‘Alas! alas!’ murmured he, 'if the procureur du roi had been here in Marseilles, I should have been ruined. This accursed letter would have destroyed all my hopes. Oh! father, must your past career always interfere with mine? Suddenly a light passed over his face, a smile played round his mouth, and his lips relaxed."This will do”, said he, “and from this letter, which might have ruined me, I will make my fortune.”