On the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Prés a mysterious tenant called Lucien keeps a first-floor apartment Albert once chose for his mother, arriving at four o'clock while a veiled lady follows twenty minutes later. The day after Monte Cristo drains Danglars, Lucien Debray receives Madame Danglars at ten in the morning instead of his usual hour. She brings news that her husband fled last night toward Fontainebleau and a letter opening Madame and most faithful wife that blames her for Eugénie's flight, confesses paying five millions, and leaves her rich but little respected.
Debray reads with cold self-control while the baroness asks whether abandonment means freedom forever. He advises a fortnight in Paris spreading desertion, then travel; when she seeks warmth he spreads stock ledgers instead. Six months of partnership yield 2,400,000 francs capital; he opens a closet chest and places before her 800 notes of 1,000 francs, a fund certificate, and a check totaling 1,340,000 francs. She waits for one kind word and receives only a careless bow. She runs downstairs without farewell while Debray mutters that she will read novels and play cards, cancels his entries, keeps 1,060,000 francs, and regrets that dead Valentine would have suited him for marriage.
Above that settling of accounts Mercédès and Albert live in gray-papered poverty without fire or flowers, constraining smiles while the son says plainly they have no more money. Albert budgets 114 francs to carry his mother to Marseilles, sells watch and seals for extra coin, and reveals he substituted in the Spahis for 2,000 francs, giving her half as a thousand-franc note. Mercédès murmurs the price of his blood and weeps while he promises to earn a name in Africa or die trying. They decide she will live on more than 4,000 francs for two years while he stays briefly for recommendations.
As Madame Danglars descends, mother and son meet Debray on the stairs. Albert introduces him as a friend once, then corrects himself: he has no friends now and needs no assistance, for after paying their journey five thousand francs will remain. Debray, with a million in his pocket-book, sees one woman leave rich and dishonored with millions under her cloak and another unjustly stricken yet noble with almost nothing; he mutters civility and flees. That night he buys a house on the Boulevard de la Madeleine and an income of fifty thousand livres. The next afternoon Mercédès enters the diligence coupé after embracing Albert. Hidden behind an arched window at Lafitte's banking-house, Monte Cristo watches her depart and Albert withdraw, then asks how he can restore the happiness he has taken from these poor innocent creatures.
