The Morrel Family — The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count drives to No. 7 Rue Meslay, the modest white house Emmanuel Herbault bought and improved while keeping a garden with a fountain the neighbors call Little Versailles. Old Cocles opens the gate but does not recognize the man he once served because nine years have passed and his one eye has grown dim.

Julie, Emmanuel, and Maximilian welcome their guest with open joy. Maximilian tells how Emmanuel and Julie refused to sell the Morrel business for easy money and lived on twenty-five thousand francs a year rather than betray his father's name. The Count listens in silence, moved by a happiness so different from the bankers and magistrates he has been visiting.

In the salon Julie shows the family's greatest treasure: a red silk purse holding Sinbad's letter and the diamond given as her dowry. She speaks of the unknown angel who saved them from ruin. The Count reads the letter he himself wrote years ago and invents a story about an Englishman named Lord Wilmore when the children press for names.

On his deathbed old Pierre Morrel had told Maximilian the benefactor was really Edmond Dantès. At that name the Count turns pale, coughs into his handkerchief, and leaves at once, saying he has yielded to his feelings for the first time in years. The Morrels think him strange but kind. They do not know the angel and the visitor are the same man.