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The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. It begins on the day that Napoleon left his first island of exile, Elba, beginning the Hundred Days period of his return to power. The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book, an adventure story centrally concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness. Before he can marry his fiancée Mercédès, Edmond Dantès, a French nineteen-year-old first mate of the merchant ship Pharaon, is falsely accused of treason, arrested, and imprisoned without trial in the Château d'If, a grim island fortress off Marseille. A fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, correctly deduces that romantic rival Fernand Mondego, envious crewmate Danglars, and double-dealing magistrate De Villefort are responsible for his imprisonment. Over the course of their long imprisonment, Faria educates Dantès and, knowing himself close to death, inspires him to retrieve for himself a cache of treasure Faria had discovered. After Faria dies, Dantès escapes and finds the treasure. As the fabulously wealthy, powerful and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, he enters the fashionable Parisian world of the 1830s to avenge himself. The book is considered a literary classic today. According to Lucy Sante, "The Count of Monte Cristo has become a fixture of Western civilization's literature." Plot Marseille and Château d'If On the day in 1815 when Napoleon escapes from Elba, Edmond Dantès sails the Pharaon into Marseille after the death of the captain, Leclère. The ship's owner, Morrel, will make Dantès the next captain. On his deathbed, Leclère charged Dantès to deliver a package to General Bertrand (exiled with Napoleon), and a letter from Elba to a Bonapartist in Paris named Noirtier. Crewmate Danglars is jealous of Dantès's rapid promotion. On the eve of Dantès's wedding to his Catalan fiancée Mercédès, Danglars meets Fernand Mondego, Mercédès's cousin and a rival for her affections, and the two hatch a plot to anonymously accuse him of being a Bonapartist. Dantès's neighbor, Caderousse, is present; he too is jealous of Dantès, but although he objects to the plot, he becomes too drunk to prevent it. Dantès is arrested, and the cowardly Caderousse stays silent. Villefort, the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, is Noirtier's son. Knowing that it would destroy his political career for it to be known that his father is a Bonapartist, he destroys the letter and silences Dantès by sentencing him without trial to life imprisonment. After six years of solitary imprisonment in the Château d'If, Dantès is on the verge of suicide when another prisoner, the Abbé Faria, an Italian scholarly priest, digs an escape tunnel that by mistake ends in Dantès's cell. The Abbé helps Dantès deduce the culprits of his imprisonment. Over the next eight years, Faria educates Dantès in languages, history, culture, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, and science. Knowing himself to be close to death from catalepsy, Faria tells Dantès the location of a vast treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo. On 28 February 1829, Faria dies. Dantès takes Faria's body to his cell and takes its place in the burial sack. When he is thrown into the sea, Dantès cuts through the sack and swims to a nearby island, where he is rescued by Genoese smugglers. Some months later, he locates and retrieves the treasure; he later purchases the island of Monte Cristo and the title of count from the Tuscan government. Having sworn vengeance on Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort, Dantès returns to Marseille in search of information for his vengeance. Travelling as the Abbé Busoni, Dantès finds Caderousse, who regrets not intervening in Dantès's arrest. Caderousse informs him that Mercédès eventually resigned herself to marrying Fernand, that Dantès's father died of starvation, and that his old employer Morrel tried in vain to secure Dantès's release and tend after his father in his absence, but is now on the brink of bankruptcy. Both Danglars and Fernand have prospered greatly. Danglars became a speculator, amassed a fortune and married a wealthy widow. Fernand served in the French Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Dantès rewards Caderousse with a diamond. Later, Caderousse negotiates the sale of the diamond to a jeweler, but kills the jeweler to keep both the diamond and the money; he is eventually arrested and sentenced to the galleys. To rescue Morrel from bankruptcy, Dantès poses as a banker, buys Morrel's debts, and gives him three months' reprieve. At the end of the three months, Morrel is about to commit suicide when he learns that they have been mysteriously paid and that one of his lost ships has returned with a full cargo, secretly rebuilt and laden by Dantès. Revenge Dantès reappears nine years later, in 1838, as the mysterious, fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. Fernand is now the Count de Morcerf, Danglars a baron and banker, and Villefort a procureur du roi ('royal prosecutor'). In Rome, at Carnival time, Dantès befriends Viscount Albert de Morcerf, the son of Mercédès and Fernand. He arranges for Albert to be captured by the bandit Luigi Vampa, and "rescues" the boy, earning his trust. Albert introduces the Count to Parisian high society. Dantès, in his guise as the Count, meets Mercédès for the first time in 23 years, and eventually makes the acquaintance of Danglars, Fernand, and Villefort. The Count purchases a home in Auteuil, a suburb of Paris. He has learned from his servant Bertuccio that it is the home in which Villefort once had an extramarital affair with Danglars's wife, who gave birth to a child that Villefort buried alive in order to cover up the affair. The infant was rescued by Bertuccio, named Benedetto, and raised by Bertuccio's sister Assunta, but Benedetto turned to a life of crime as a young man, murdered Assunta, and was sentenced to the galleys himself. Having impressed Parisian society with his wealth and air of mystery, the Count begins setting up the pieces for his revenge. He persuades Danglars to extend him a credit of six million francs. He discusses the properties of various poisons with Villefort's second wife Heloïse, and allows her to borrow some of his supply. He allows his ward, Haydée—the exiled daughter of Ali Pasha of Janina, whom Dantès purchased from slavery—to see Fernand, recognizing him as the man who betrayed and murdered her father and stole his fortune. Having freed Benedetto and Caderousse from the galleys.... Discover the Alexandre Dumas Lowell Bair popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Alexandre Dumas Lowell Bair books.