Alexandre Dumas

The Count Of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

The novel begins with Edmundo (Edmond) Dantès returning to Marseille, where he meets his family and friends. Dantès is about to receive a promotion to captain in the merchant shipping company where he is employed, and he is also preparing to marry a beautiful Spanish woman, Mercédès Herrera. However, Dantès, then naive, does not realize how his fortune arouses envy and resentment among people in his circle: Danglars - an employee of the same shipping company where he works, who envies Edmond's imminent promotion - and Fernando Mondego, Mercedes's cousin, who loves her, without being reciprocated. Thus, Danglars and Fernando, moved by their respective ambitions, hatch a plot in which Edmundo is accused of being a Bonapartist agent. Both base the plot based on the fact that Dantès, following the last will of the captain of his ship, who dies on the return trip to Marseille, makes a stop on the island of Elba, where Napoleon is imprisoned. This gives him a letter addressed to a man in Paris of whom he only tells him the name: Noirtier. Specifically, Danglars and Fernando write an anonymous letter accusing Dantés of being a Bonapartist agent, in the presence of a neighbor of Edmundo: Gaspar Caderousse ....