Franz, who was drawn towards the count by an attraction mingled with terror, accompanied Albert because he did not want to let him go to see the man alone. Both of them were introduced into the drawing-room. Five minutes later, the count appeared.

The first thing that Albert said on getting up the next day was to suggest that he and Franz went to visit the count. He had already thanked him on the previous evening, but he realized that he deserved to be thanked twice for a service such as the one he had performed for him.

"Monsieur le Comte," Albert said, advancing towards him, "allow me to repeat this morning what I could only imperfectly tell you yesterday, which is that I shall never forget the nature of the assistance you gave me and that I shall always remember that I owe you my life, or nearly so."

"My dear neighbour," the count replied, laughing, "you are exaggerating your debt to me. All I did was to save you the sum of twenty thousand francs on the expenses of your trip, nothing more. As you see, it is hardly worth mentioning. For your part," he added, "may I congratulate you on your remarkable nerve and coolness."

"How else could I behave, Count?" said Albert. "I pretended to myself that I had got into an argument and a duel had resulted. I wanted to demonstrate something to those bandits, namely that while people fight one another in every country in the world, only a Frenchman jests as he fights. However, since my obligation to you is no less great for all that, I have come to ask you if, either myself, or through my friends -- or my own acquaintances -- I might not be of some service to you. My father, the Comte de Morcerf, who is a Spaniard by origin, holds high positions in both France and Spain, so I have come to put myself, and all those who are fond of me, at your disposal."

"What service?"

"I have never been to Paris! I do not know the city…"

"Well," said the count, "I must confess, Monsieur de Morcerf, that I was expecting your offer and that I accept it gratefully. I had already set my heart on the idea of asking a great service of you."

"Really!" Albert exclaimed. "Have you managed to live so long without seeing Paris! That is incredible."

"Oh, so far as that is concerned, Monsieur le Comte, entirely and most willingly!" Albert replied. "And all the more so -- my dear Franz, do not make too much fun of me! -- since I have been recalled to Paris by a letter which I received this morning, which speaks of my alliance with a very fine house, and one that has excellent connections in Parisian society."

"What! A man like you!" said Albert.

"It is so, nonetheless. But, like you, I feel that it is not possible for me to remain any longer in ignorance of the capital of the intelligent world. There is something more: I might even have made this essential journey a long time ago if I had known someone who could have introduced me into Parisian society; but I have no connections there."

"You are very kind. But since I would not claim any greater merit for myself than that of being able to compete in wealth with Monsieur Aguado or Monsieur Rothschild, and since I am not going to Paris to invest on the Stock Exchange, this little consideration prevented me. Now, thanks to your offer, I have made up my mind. So, do you promise, dear Monsieur de Morcerf," (the count smiled in a singular manner as he said these words) "do you promise, when I go to France, to open for me the doors of that society where I shall be as much a foreigner as a Huron or a Cochin Chinese?"

"Heavens above, yes! So, when you return to Paris you will find me firmly settled down and perhaps even a father. This should suit my natural gravity, don't you think? In any case, Count, I repeat: I and my family are entirely at your disposal."

"Come now, Count," Albert went on, delighted at the idea of being able to exhibit a man like Monte Cristo. "Isn't this one of those vague plans, like thousands that one makes when travelling, which are founded on sand and which blow away in the first breeze?"

"I accept," said the count. "I assure you that I was only waiting for this opportunity to carry out some plans that I have been considering for a long while."

"An alliance by marriage?" Franz asked, laughing.

Franz did not doubt for a moment that these plans were the same that the count had mentioned in passing in the caves of Monte Cristo, and he watched him as he was speaking in an attempt to glimpse something in his expression which would indicate what it was that would bring him to Paris; but it was very difficult to probe the man's soul, especially when he veiled it with a smile.

"Is that a bachelor apartment? I won't be disturbing you?"

"Perfect!" said Albert. "Breakfast will be ready."

"Number twenty-seven, Rue du Helder."

"Agreed, then." He reached over to a calendar hanging beside the mirror. "Today is the twenty-first of February…" (he took out his watch) "… and it is half-past ten in the morning. May I call at half-past ten on May the twenty-first next?"

"Day for day, hour for hour," said Albert. "That will suit me down to the ground."

"Do you want us to make an appointment, day for day and hour for hour?" said the count. "I warn you, I am fearfully punctual."

"When?"

"And in three months," Albert exclaimed joyfully, "you will knock on my door?"

"In that case," said the count, "I give you three months. You see that I am leaving you considerable latitude."

"When will you be there yourself?"

"Me?" said Albert. "My goodness! In a fortnight or three weeks: as long as it takes me to get there."

"Where do you live?"

"No, I guarantee that," said the count. "I want to go to Paris. I must go there."

"Now," he said, returning the notebook to his pocket, "have no fear: the hand of your clock will not be more punctual than I."

"In that case, I must bid you farewell. I have business in Naples and I shall not return until Saturday evening or Sunday morning. And you, Monsieur le Baron," the count asked, turning to Franz, "are you also leaving?"

"For France?"

"Yes."

"Tomorrow, at five in the evening."

"I live in my father's house, but in entirely separate lodgings at the back of the courtyard."

"No, for Venice. I shall be staying another year or two in Italy."

"Very well." The count took his notebook and wrote: "Rue du Helder, No. 27, on May 21, at half-past ten in the morning."

"That depends. When do you leave?"

This was the first time that Franz had touched the man's hand, and he shuddered; it was as icy as the hand of a corpse.

"I fear I shall not have that honour."

"Very well, gentlemen. Bon voyage," the count said to the two friends, offering each of them a hand.

"Shall I see you before my departure?" asked Albert.

"So we shall not see you in Paris?"

"One last time," said Albert. "It's agreed, isn't it, on your word? Number twenty-seven, Rue du Helder, on May the twenty-first at half-past ten in the morning?"

"May the twenty-first, at half-past ten in the morning, at number twenty-seven, Rue du Helder," the count repeated.

"Worried! About the rendez-vous! I never! Are you mad, my dear Franz?" Albert exclaimed.

"Yes," said Franz. "I must confess that the count is an odd man and I am worried about the rendez-vous that he made with you in Paris."

"Mad or not, I can't help it."

"Listen," Albert said, "I am happy to have an opportunity to say this to you: I have always thought you behaved rather coldly towards the count, while I think he, on his side, has always been most agreeable towards us. Do you have anything in particular against him?"

At this, the two young men took their leave of the count and left.

"Perhaps."

"Did you come across him somewhere before meeting him here?"

"What's wrong?" Albert asked Franz when they got back to his rooms. "You seem quite preoccupied with something."

"Where?"

"Precisely."

"Do you promise me that you will not say a word of what I am about to tell you?"

"On your honour?"

"I promise."

"Very well. Then I'll tell you."

"On my honour."

Then he went on to Rome, to the night in the Colosseum and the conversation that he had heard between the count and Vampa concerning Peppino, in which the count promised to secure a pardon for the bandit (a promise which he had fully kept, as the readers can judge).

Finally he got to the adventure of the previous night, the difficulty he found himself in when he discovered that he was six or seven hundred piastres short of the necessary amount; and the idea that he had eventually had of going to the count, an idea that had had such an exotic and, at the same time, satisfactory outcome.

Franz described his voyage to the island of Monte Cristo, how he had found a crew of smugglers there and two Corsican bandits among them. He told at great length about the fairy-tale hospitality that the count had offered him in his grotto out of the Thousand and One Nights: the supper, the hashish, the statues, reality and dream, and how when he woke up there was nothing left as evidence to recall any of these events except the little yacht sailing over the horizon towards Porto Vecchio.

"Well, now," he said, when the story was over. "What do you have to reproach him with in all this? The count is a traveller and he had his own boat, because he is rich. Go to Portsmouth or Southampton and you will see the ports crowded with yachts belonging to rich Englishmen who are indulging the same whim. So that he has somewhere to stop in his travels and so that he does not have to eat this frightful cooking that has been poisoning me for the past four months, and you for the past four years, and so that he does not have to lie in those abominable beds where you can't sleep, he had a pied-à-terre fitted out on Monte Cristo. When it was furnished, he was afraid that the Tuscan government would expel him and that he would lose his money, so he bought the island and took its name. My dear friend, just think: how many people can you remember who have taken the names of properties that they never had?"

Albert listened attentively.

"But what about the Corsican bandits in his crew?" Franz asked.

"What about them? What is surprising about that? You know as well as anyone that Corsican bandits are not thieves, but purely and simply outlaws who have been exiled from their town or their village because of some vendetta. Anyone can mix with them without being compromised. Why, I do declare that if ever I go to Corsica, before I am introduced to the governor and the préfet, I shall have myself introduced to the bandits of Colomba, if they are anywhere to be found. I think they're delightful."

"What I say, my dear man, is that since I probably owe my life to it, it's not my place to criticize him. So, instead of treating this influence as a capital offence, as you do, I wonder if you would mind if I excuse him, if not for having saved my life, which might be going a little too far, at least for saving me four thousand piastres, which is a good twenty-four thousand livres in our money: I should certainly not have had such a high price in France -- which only goes to prove," Albert added, laughing, "that no man is a prophet in his own country."

"But Vampa and his band," Franz went on, "are bandits who abduct people to steal from them: you won't deny that, at least, I hope. What do you say about the count's influence over such men?"

"Precisely, there you have it! What country does the count come from? What is his language? What are his means of support? Where does his huge fortune come from? What was the first half of this mysterious and unknown life, that it has cast over the second half such a dark and misanthropic shadow? That, if I were you, is what I should want to know."

"Yes."

"My dear Franz," Albert said, "when you received my letter and you saw that we needed the count's influence, you went to tell him: 'My friend, Albert de Morcerf, is in danger; help me to rescue him from it.' Is that not so?"

"He came, quite simply. He helped me to escape from the clutches of Monsieur Vampa in which, despite what you call my air of entire unconcern, I must confess I was in a pretty sorry pass. Well, my dear fellow, when in exchange for such a service he asks me to do what one does every day for the first Russian or Italian prince who passes through Paris, that is to say, to introduce him to society, how could I refuse! You are mad to suggest it!"

"And did he ask you: 'Who is that Albert de Morcerf? Where does he get his name? Where does his fortune come from? What are his means of support? What is his country? Where was he born?' Tell me, did he ask you all that?"

"No, he didn't, I admit."

It must be admitted that this time, contrary to what was usually the case, Albert had all the arguments on his side.

It was as Albert said, and the following day, at five in the afternoon, the two young men took their leave of one another, Albert de Morcerf to return to Paris and Franz d'Epinay to go and spend a fortnight in Venice.

"The Count of Monte Cristo is a philanthropist. He didn't tell you his purpose in coming to Paris, but he is coming to take part in the Prix Montyon; and if he only needs my vote and that of the very ugly gentleman who distributes them to succeed, then I shall give him the first and make sure he has the second. With that, my dear Franz, let's say no more about it, but have lunch and go on a final visit to Saint Peter's."

"Very well," Franz said, sighing, "do as you wish, my dear Vicomte, because I have to agree that everything you have just said is very persuasive. But the fact remains that the Count of Monte Cristo is a very strange man."

But before he got into his carriage, Albert gave the waiter at the hotel a card for the Count of Monte Cristo, so determined was he that his guest should not fail to attend their meeting. On it were the words: "Vicomte Albert de Morcerf" and, under them, in pencil: "May 21, at half-past ten in the morning, at 27, Rue du Helder."