The Count of Monte Cristo - Part 3

Jeez.  What an over long and round-about way we have come to inserting Dantes into Parisian society. OMG I was beginning to lose patience over all the stories about the bandits, women snatching and rape.  Then ransoming of men.  Notice they did not rape them.  The Italian accent the narrator put on for these parts was extremely irritating.  And then the whole Albert and Franz deal in Rome and the Coliseum and the parties and operas and executions.  By now Dantes has styled himself the Count of Monte Cristo and has evidently purchased the miserable rock.  He’s all mysterious and is seen with equally mysterious women.  He has ties with bandits and has secret assignations within ancient ruins. He’s ghostly pale and excitable females think he’s a vampire a la Count Ruthven.  His newly constructed character serves him well and Albert is nearly in thrall to him while Franz is more cautious having met him in the secret cave at Monte Cristo and overheard his equally secret meeting with the bandit Luigi Vampa.  It seems like an awful lot of maneuvering, but that’s just me.  Right now I’m getting an in-depth description of Albert’s house and furnishings.  I admit it is a bit trying.  Ah, Madame Danglars has sent a note to Albert and he’s just showered her with gifts for inviting him to her theater box.

So now Dantes is well and good inserted into society and is a mystery all want to solve.  I think this book must be one of the progenitors of the all encompassing, interconnected-to-the-point-of-absurdity novels.  Not only are his main acquaintances part of his past sorrows, but even his servants are part of this huge web - delicious to be sure. All to be manipulated exactly as he wants. Only in fiction could it be so and it is part of what makes fiction magical; that all things are possible.  Now when there is a tangent, I pay close attention knowing it will be important somehow in the grand scheme of things.  In a way I’m glad it’s going to take so long to get everyone paid back; the dance is wonderful.

Oh and I have to say that the dialogue between The Count and his enemies is so amazing I can hardly stand it.  The veiled insults that are sometimes so obscured that you have to LOOK for the insult and then parse its meaning.  I sometimes wish we still could skewer each other so delicately.