Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Count of Monte Cristo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice, Revenge, and God’s Will
Changes of Identity and Station
Love, Devotion, and Redemption
Debt and Gratitude
The Domestic and the Foreign
Summary
Analysis
Albert de Morcerf returns to the house of the Count of Monte Cristo, where, after some discussion, he says that he wishes to speak with Haydee, whose guzla-playing he hears in the other room. The Count warns Albert not to mention that his father, Fernand, served with Haydee’s father, the Ali Pasha, in the Greek wars against the Turks—the Count intimates that this might cause Haydee to become upset. The Count repeats what he has told other characters throughout the novel to this point—that Haydee is his slave, and that he bought her to save her from another master in Constantinople after her father and mother died.
Of course, Count the knows full well that by introducing Haydee and Albert he is setting in motion another stage of his plot. Once Albert realizes what his father has allegedly done to Haydee’s father, he will begin to be curious about his family’s lineage. The Count depends upon Albert’s, and other citizens’, investigations into the crimes Fernand has committed as a way of outing him as a fraud among Parisian high society.
Themes
The Count and Albert find Haydee in her chambers, where she is smoking her pipe and drinking coffee. Albert asks her about her life in Paris, but the Count directs Albert to ask instead about her childhood in the East. Haydee tells a story about fleeing with her mother from operatives who were spying on her father. These men, working for the Turks, wound up stabbing the Ali Pasha dead in front of Haydee, and eventually Haydee’s mother died of grief from the ill treatment her husband received.
This is another embedded narrative in the text. Here Haydee is the storyteller, and once again she supplies details of her life with which the characters in the room, and the reader, are not yet acquainted. Like Dantes, Haydee has suffered a great deal at a young age, and although the Count never states this directly, their misfortunes in youth are another bond linking these two figures together.
Themes
Haydee says that she is eternally grateful to the Count for saving her from whatever ill fate awaited her at the hands of the Turks in Constantinople. Albert apologizes for prompting so sad a tale as this, but the Count replies that Haydee likes to speak of her past, and that Albert, perhaps, has learned something about the Count’s relationship to her. They finish their coffee and Albert departs.
Now the Count has made sure that Albert knows just what happened to Haydee’s family. All that is missing is the key link between Fernand and Haydee – which, the Count believes, will be supplied in short enough order. The Count understands that his plot against the Morcerfs has come close to fruition.
Themes
