The Assizes — The Count of Monte Cristo

The Benedetto affair has become the sensation of the Palais. Paris crowds the iron gates from seven in the morning to watch the false Cavalcanti, once prince of the Café de Paris and the Bois, tried as a galley-slave for murdering Caderousse. Many who toasted Andrea still call him handsome victim of conspiracy; others expect the old patrician father to reappear and claim his outcast. On a brilliant September day the privileged hall feels more drawing-room than court, full of whispering acquaintances saving seats before the magistrates enter.

Beauchamp, Debray, and Château-Renaud bargain with a sergeant-at-arms for front places and trade gossip about sham Italian princes, Valentine's death, and the president's verdict that Benedetto is a commonplace fool unworthy of phrenology after hanging. Beauchamp spots a veiled Madame Danglars though her husband has fled and Eugénie is gone; Debray deflects talk of Madame de Villefort distilling cosmetics instead of attending. Beauchamp spins darker rumor from a terrified servant: young Edward keeps poison from his mother's laboratory and has used it on the Saint-Mérans, Barrois, and Valentine. Château-Renaud laughs while Debray notes Villefort has secluded himself since his daughter's strange death.

The Count of Monte Cristo stays away, said to be exhausted after the Cavalcanti swindle and unwilling to appear since Caderousse was murdered leaving his house. Beauchamp points to the famous waistcoat on the desk, blood-stained, holding the letter that stopped Eugénie's marriage contract, and calls the Count an actor in the drama though no assassin himself. A noise stirs the hall; sergeants recall the gentlemen to their seats, and the door-keeper's shrill Beaumarchais voice cries the court, gentlemen, opening the assizes on spectacle rather than sympathy.