The Monk: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Raymond and Lorenzo head to Raymond’s hotel room to discuss Raymond’s relationship with Agnes.  Lorenzo treats Raymond coldly, upset the latter has put Agnes’s reputation at risk. Raymond asks if Lorenzo has heard of Alphonso d’Alvarada before. Lorenzo explains that, according to his aunt, Alphonso d’Alvarada is the reason Agnes decided to join the convent. Agnes and the man met after he found his way to the castle of Lindenberg, where Agnes had been brought up, but he ran off before they could elope together. He left upon discovering that some estates in Hispaniola belonged to Lorenzo, not to Agnes (as Alphonso had thought). Lorenzo now realizes that Alphonso d’Alvarada and Raymond are the same person.

Raymond explains that the aunt’s story is full of ill-intentioned falsehoods. He tells Lorenzo his story now in order to set the record straight. After leaving university in Salamanca, Raymond traveled around Europe. On the advice of one of his father’s advisors, he concealed his noble rank to get a true sense of the lives of real people. This is how he got the name Alphonso d’Alvarada. His first stop was Paris, and he was disappointed to find people of the higher classes whom he met there were in fact base and immoral. Next he headed to Germany, where he saw a baroness (Lorenzo’s aunt) returning to her husband’s castle in Strasbourg. Raymond decided to head that way, too.

En route to Strasbourg, Raymond’s carriage breaks down. Strasbourg is still quite a ways away, and so, per his carriage driver Claude’s advice, Raymond takes shelter in the nearby home of a woodsman named Baptiste. Baptiste is friendly, but his wife, Marguerite, is cold and unwelcoming. The baroness whom Raymond saw earlier arrives at the cottage with some of her servants, and they take shelter there, too. A while later, the woodsman’s sons and Marguerite’s stepsons, Robert and Jacques, arrive. Raymond notes that Robert and Jacques travel armed with guns, and the sons explain that the forests are full of robbers and are dangerous at night. Despite this, the baroness asks Claude to deliver a letter to her husband in Strasbourg that night. Raymond is puzzled when Claude agrees.

After the others have gone to their rooms, Marguerite discreetly hisses at Raymond to look at the sheets on his bed. Raymond is alarmed to find that the sheets are stained with blood, and he becomes immediately suspicious. Upon opening his window and catching Baptiste and Claude—who apparently never left—discussing the wealth of Raymond and the baroness, Raymond realizes that Baptiste and his sons are in fact the aforementioned robbers: they merely feign hospitality to lure in unsuspecting travelers who they then murder for their wealth. At this point, Claude leaves to fetch more bandits to overpower the baroness’s many servants, and Baptiste returns to the cottage.

Frazzled and nervous, Raymond heads downstairs for supper and pretends that everything is normal. He glances at Marguerite to show that he has understood her message and now recognizes her initial coldness for what it really was: disgust at her husband’s immoral scheming. Raymond tries but struggles to act as though everything is normal. At first he thinks he might try to alert the servants to what’s going on, but he realizes this is impossible: Robert and Jacques are watching his every move. When Baptiste offers everyone a special wine, Raymond accepts but only pretends to drink, suspecting it has been tampered with. Raymond’s suspicions prove correct when the baroness falls into a deep sleep. Not wanting to give himself away, Raymond pretends to fall asleep, too.

While Raymond feigns sleep, he hears the sound of approaching horses and realizes the bandits Claude summoned have arrived. Baptiste orders his sons to join the other bandits in the barn to dispose of the servants there. Baptiste, meanwhile, will take care of Raymond and the baroness. While Baptiste’s back is turned, Marguerite hisses to Raymond to act. Raymond opens his eyes in time to see that Baptiste has fetched a knife from the cupboard. Baptiste is caught off guard, and Raymond easily overpowers and kills him.

Marguerite, Raymond, and the unconscious baroness escape on horseback and head toward Strasbourg, which is nearer than Claude had made it out to be. When the bandits realize what has happened, they pursue them, but the escapees avoid capture when they encounter a band of cavaliers just outside town. Among the cavaliers, by coincidence, is Marguerite’s son Theodore. The escapees are brought to Strasbourg, where the baron greets them. The travelers learn that the baroness’s two female servants and a small boy—Marguerite’s younger son—managed to escape the slaughter unscathed.

Overjoyed at hearing that her younger son has survived, Marguerite explains her life story. She was born in Strasbourg to a wealthy family but eloped with a man of noble birth who had frittered away his wealth and since been disowned by his family. The elopement caused Marguerite’s family to disown her, as well. Marguerite and her husband went off to live in a cavern in the woods and had two sons. The man turned to banditry to make ends meet, though he kept this from Marguerite, knowing she wouldn’t approve. After Marguerite’s husband died on the job, the other bandits refused to let her re-enter respectable society. Instead, they forced her to marry another bandit, Baptiste. A bandit who used to be a monk officiated the wedding ceremony. Baptiste was a cruel husband who threatened to have Marguerite’s two sons killed if she tried to escape.

It was not until Raymond arrived at the cottage that Marguerite formulated a plan to flee. After making Raymond’s bed with the bloodstained sheets, she discreetly ordered Theodore to travel to Strasbourg to inform the authorities that the escapees would be headed their way and to assemble a group of cavaliers to intercept them.

Marguerite’s story ends here. Though she fully expected her father to reject her, he happily accepts her and her children back into his life. Theodore convinces his family to let him serve as Raymond’s page for a year. The baron and baroness are grateful to Raymond for his role in rescuing the baroness, and they agree to let him and Theodore travel with them to stay at their castle in Bavaria. And this, explains Raymond to Lorenzo in the novel’s present, is how “Alphonso” made his way to the castle in Lindenberg.