Pyramus and Thisbe — The Count of Monte Cristo

Behind the Villefort mansion on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré lies an abandoned kitchen garden divided from the house by a rusted iron gate. Maximilian Morrel rents the lucern patch for five hundred francs a year so he can meet Valentine through the planks without being recognized as a Spahis captain. He appears in a gardener's blouse and cap while she waits on the other side of the barrier. Spring chestnut blossoms fall into the stone vases above the unused gate, and the whole scene feels borrowed from an old tragedy.

They talk like Pyramus and Thisbe with real danger between them. Maximilian declares his love; Valentine reminds him she is promised to Franz d'Épinay and will not break her word. He says he took up gardening so no one would wonder why a soldier lurks near the procureur's chestnut trees. She calls the plan foolish and clever at once.

Valentine describes a house where her father is cold, her stepmother envies her inheritance, and only paralyzed Grandfather Noirtier answers with honest looks from his eyes. Edward, her spoiled half-brother, makes life harder every day. She tells how she once read aloud that Maximilian had won the Legion of Honor and saw her father turn pale with hatred at the Morrel name while Danglars sat nearby. Noirtier alone seemed glad.

When Maximilian presses her to choose him, Valentine will pass only her fingers through the gate. She speaks of her dead mother in Marseilles and says she would have protected their love. Politics still poison the two families: Villefort called the Morrels troublesome Bonapartists, and the old wound has never healed.

A servant interrupts to say the Count of Monte Cristo waits in the drawing-room. Valentine answers that she is coming and hurries away. The name strikes Maximilian like lightning as he leans on his spade and pretends to weed the lucern. He wonders how the man who rescued his sister's family has become a guest in Villefort's salon. The mysterious count who saved his family is inside the enemy's house, and he cannot guess why. For now he can only stand outside and listen to the world changing indoors.