The Count of Monte Cristo · Chapter
Endnotes explained
This chapter consists of endnotes providing explanations, translations, and contextual references for various terms, allusions, and historical figures mentioned throughout the book.
What happens
This chapter consists of endnotes providing explanations, translations, and contextual references for various terms, allusions, and historical figures mentioned throughout the book.
Key passages
“The wicked are great drinkers of water, As the flood proved once for all.”
Evil people are heavy water drinkers, as the biblical flood demonstrated.
A reference to the idea that the wicked were punished by the flood.
“If by six in the morning the four thousand piastres are not in my hands, by seven o'clock the Count Albert will have ceased to live.”
If I do not receive four thousand piastres by six in the morning, Count Albert will be dead by seven.
A ransom or threat demanding payment for Albert's life.
“Money and sanctity, Each in a moiety.”
Money and holiness, each in equal parts.
A phrase suggesting a balance between wealth and piety.
“Of thy father the fate, but not the name of the traitor or the treason, relate to us.”
Tell us about your father's fate, but do not reveal the name of the traitor or the treason.
A request to share a story without incriminating details.
“The son of an ill-fated sire, and the father of a yet more unfortunate family, bore in his looks that cast of inauspicious melancholy by which the physiognomists of that time pretended to distinguish those who were predestined to a violent and unhappy death.”
He was the son of a doomed father and the father of an even more unfortunate family, and his appearance showed a melancholy that physiognomists believed marked those destined for a violent death.
A description from Scott's The Abbot, chapter XXII, about a character's doomed appearance.