Between midday and two o'clock, Danglars had been in his study, breaking the seals on his dispatches and growing more and more gloomy as he piled one set of figures on another. He also received some visitors, including Major Cavalcanti who, in blue as always, stiff and punctual, arrived at the time appointed on the previous day to complete his business with the banker.

Danglars had been expecting this departure and watched it from behind a curtain. He gave orders that he should be told as soon as madame returned, but at two o'clock she had still not done so. He called for his horses and went to the House, where he had his name put down to speak against the budget.

During the debate Danglars had shown signs of violent agitation and, above all, had been more than usually cutting about the government; on leaving the House, he got into his carriage and asked to be driven to No. 30, Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

The day after this scene, at the time which Debray usually chose to make a brief visit to Mme Danglars on his way to the office, his coupé did not appear in the courtyard. Instead, at this same time, around half-past twelve, Mme Danglars called for her carriage and went out.

A moment later, the door through which the priest had entered opened and Monte Cristo appeared. "Forgive me, dear Baron," he said, "but one of my good friends, Abbé Busoni, whom you saw enter, has just arrived in Paris. It is a long time since we last met and I could not tear myself away from him immediately. I hope that this reason will be sufficient to persuade you to excuse me for keeping you waiting."

"Not at all. On the contrary, please sit down. But, my goodness, what is wrong? You seem quite worried. In truth, you alarm me. A crestfallen capitalist is like a comet: he always warns of some great misfortune to come."

Monte Cristo was at home, but he had a visitor, so he asked Danglars to wait for a moment in the drawing-room. While he was waiting, the door opened and he saw a man enter, in the dress of an abbé. This person, instead of waiting like Danglars, appeared to be a more familiar visitor at the house: he bowed, went through into the inner room and disappeared.

"What do you mean?" said Danglars. "I am the one who chose my time badly. I shall leave at once."

"Really? I suppose your bankrupt wouldn't be Jacopo Manfredi by any chance?"

"The very man! Here is someone who -- for I don't know how long -- has been doing eight or nine hundred thousand francs of business with me a year. Never any mistakes, never any delays: the man used to settle his debts like a prince… like a paying prince. I advance him a million and, lo and behold, for the first time the devil stops his remittance."

"What's wrong, Monsieur," said Danglars, "is that I have been suffering a run of bad luck for the past few days, and all the news I have is bad news."

"No, I'm cured of that, at least for a few days. The latest is a bankruptcy in Trieste."

"Heaven preserve us!" said Monte Cristo. "Have you had another loss on the Exchange?"

"Is that so?"

"It's an extraordinary piece of luck. I drew six hundred thousand livres on him, which has been returned, unpaid, and, in addition to that, I hold bills of exchange to the value of four hundred thousand francs, signed by him and payable by his partner in Paris at the end of the month. It is the thirtieth. I send someone for the money and -- as you've guessed -- the partner is not to be found. With this Spanish business, it's been a good month, I can tell you!"

"But did you really lose on that Spanish business?"

"How on earth did an old fox like you get caught in that way?"

"There you are! It's my wife's fault. She dreamt that Don Carlos had returned to Spain, and she believes in dreams. It's to do with magnetism, she says, and when she dreams something, it must surely happen. I allow her to gamble on her beliefs: she has her own account and her broker. She gambled and lost. Of course it was her money and not mine that she lost, but you must still see that, when seven hundred thousand francs go out of the wife's pocket, the husband is bound to notice it a little. What! Didn't you know about it? Everyone was talking about what happened."

"You don't gamble on the Exchange?"

"No doubt about it: I'm not less than seven hundred thousand francs down."

"Yes, I did hear tell of it, but I didn't know the details. And then I am utterly ignorant when it comes to anything to do with stocks and shares."

"Me? How do you expect me to gamble? I already have enough trouble working out my income. I should be obliged to take on a clerk and an accountant as well as my steward. But, on this matter of Spain, it seems to me that the baroness was not alone in dreaming about the return of Don Carlos. Didn't the papers have something to say about it?"

"Do you believe what you read in the papers?"

"It's not a matter of 'around', that's the figure."

"Not in the least, but I did think that Le Messager was an exception to the rule, and that it only carried authenticated news, news from the telegraph."

"And that is precisely what can't be explained," Danglars said. "The news of Don Carlos' return did come through the telegraph."

"All of which means that you have lost around one million seven hundred thousand francs this month?"

"The deuce it is!" Monte Cristo said sympathetically. "For a third-class fortune, that's a hard blow."

"Oh, yes, no doubt," said Monte Cristo. "I divide the rich into three categories: first-class, second-class and third-class fortunes. A first-class fortune, I would call one which is made up of disposable treasures, land, mines and incomes from government bonds in countries like France, Austria or England, provided these treasures, possessions or incomes add up to a total of at least a hundred million. A second-class fortune is one whose owner possesses factories, business interests, viceroyships or principalities yielding under one million five hundred thousand francs, all adding up to a capital of some fifty million. Finally, a third-class fortune would be capital paying compound interest, profits depending on the will of others or on chance, which are liable to be damaged by a bankruptcy or shattered by a telegraph signal; occasional speculation and other operations subject to the whims of a fate which we might call force mineure, by analogy with the whims of nature which are force majeure; all of it amounting to a real or hypothetical capital of some fifteen million. Isn't that roughly your situation?"

"A third-class fortune!" Danglars exclaimed, slightly insulted. "What the devil do you mean by that?"

"Say seven months," Monte Cristo continued, in the same tone. "Tell me, have you ever considered that seven times one million seven hundred thousand francs makes about twelve million? No? Well, you are right, because if one were to reflect on such things, one would never venture one's capital, which is to the financier what his skin is to a civilized man. We have our more or less sumptuous clothes, which are our credit, but when a man dies he has only his skin. Just as, when you leave business, you will have your real wealth -- five or six million at most… because a third-class fortune barely represents a third or a quarter of what it appears, much as the locomotive of a railway train, amid the steam and smoke that enwraps it and enlarges it, is only at base a more or less powerful machine. Well, of the five million that represent your real capital, you have just lost around two million, which reduces your notional fortune or your credit by the same amount. All this means, my dear Monsieur Danglars, that your skin has just been opened by a wound which, repeated four times, would mean death. Well, well! You must be careful, my dear Monsieur Danglars. Do you need money? Can I lend you some?"

"Good heavens, yes!" said Danglars.

"Huh!" Danglars said, with a very pale smile. "That's a nice way of putting it."

"So that means that six months like the one you have just had would send a third-class firm to its deathbed," Monte Cristo said imperturbably.

"No, because my business is founded on certainties," said Danglars with the glibness of a charlatan whose profession is to extol his own credit. "For me to be overthrown, three governments would have to fall."

"Excellent, excellent; but the scar remains. At the first loss it will re-open."

"Well, it has happened."

"Your sums are quite wrong!" Danglars exclaimed, summoning up all the philosophy and dissimulation he could muster. "The way things stand, money has been coming into my account from successful speculation. The blood that flowed out of the wound has been replaced by nourishment. I may have lost a battle in Spain, and I was defeated at Trieste, but my Indian navy should have captured some galleons and my Mexican prospectors have found a mine."

"And for the harvest to fail."

"Remember the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows."

"So much the better, a thousand times, my dear Monsieur Danglars," said Monte Cristo. "I see I was wrong and that yours comes into the category of second-class fortunes."

"Or for the sea to part, as at the time of the Pharaohs; and even then, there are several seas, and the ships would get by through turning into caravans."

"Give him some money, I suppose, if he has a credit with you and you think it's good."

"I think I may aspire to that honour," said Danglars with one of those fatuous smiles which had the same effect on Monte Cristo as the pallid moons that inferior painters plant in the sky above their ruins. "But since we are talking business," he continued, delighted at finding this excuse to change the subject, "can you give me some idea of what I might do for Monsieur Cavalcanti?"

"If I might venture to ask, how much is he giving the young man?"

Monte Cristo gave a nod to signify his full approval.

"Splendid! He presented himself this morning with a bill for forty thousand francs, drawn on you and payable on sight, signed Busoni and forwarded to me by you with your endorsement. You will appreciate that I gave him his forty notes straight away."

"But that is not all," Danglars went on. "He has opened a credit with us on behalf of his son."

"Five thousand francs a month."

"Sixty thousand a year. I'm not surprised," Monte Cristo said, shrugging his shoulders. "They are so timorous, these Cavalcantis. What does he expect a young man to do with five thousand a month?"

"Don't. The father would leave you to foot the bill. You don't know these Italian millionaires: they are real misers. By whom was the credit opened?"

"But you know, if the young man should need a few thousand more…"

"Me? I'd give him ten million against his signature. My dear sir, his is one of those second-class fortunes we were just talking about."

"Don't you have confidence in this Cavalcanti?"

"Yet he is such an ordinary man. I'd have taken him for a major, nothing more."

"I'm not saying that you'll lose, far from it. But keep strictly to the letter."

"He would have been honoured, because you're right, he's nothing to look at. When I saw him for the first time, he looked to me like an old lieutenant gone to seed. But all Italians are like that: either they look like old money-lenders, or else they dazzle you like Oriental magi."

"By the firm of Fenzi, one of the best in Florence."

"Yes. A trifle shy, perhaps. But all in all he seemed respectable enough to me. I was worried about him."

"The young man is better," said Danglars.

"And you know about his fortune?"

"Usually that's true. But Cavalcanti is an eccentric who does nothing like anyone else. I am convinced that he has sent his son to France to find a wife."

"What's your personal opinion?"

"Just that: personal, so don't rely on it."

"I hear about nothing else. Except that some people say he has millions, others that he doesn't have a farthing."

"My opinion is that all these old podestas, the former condottieri -- because the Cavalcantis used to command armies and used to rule provinces… Well, my opinion, as I say, is that they buried millions in nooks and crannies that only their ancestors knew and passed down from eldest son to eldest son through the generations. The proof is that they are all dry and yellow like their florins from the days of the republic: their faces have spent so long looking at the coins that they have come to reflect them."

"Because when you met him at my house, that was virtually his first encounter with society, or so they tell me. He travelled with a very strict tutor and had never been to Paris."

"I'm sure of it."

"Do you think so?"

"These upper-class Italians, they usually marry among themselves, don't they?" Danglars asked casually. "They like to unite their fortunes."

"But…"

"Why?"

"Very little, at least. In Cavalcanti's case, all I know is his palace in Lucca."

"Exactly," said Danglars. "All the more so since none of these people seems to own a square inch of land."

"Yes, and he rents it to the Minister of Finance, while he himself lives in a cottage. I told you: I think the fellow's tight-fisted."

"Ah, so he does have a palace," said Danglars, laughing. "That's something at any rate."

"I must say, you don't flatter him."

"Listen, I hardly know him. I may have seen him three times in my life. What I do know comes from Abbé Busoni and from Cavalcanti himself. He was talking to me this morning about his plans for his son and hinted that he was tired of letting large sums of money sleep idly in Italy, which is a dead country, so he would like to find a way, in either France or Italy, of making his millions bear fruit. However, I must insist that, though I have every confidence in Abbé Busoni himself, I can guarantee nothing."

"No matter. Thank you for sending me a customer. It's a fine name to write on my register, and my cashier, to whom I explained about the Cavalcantis, is full of self-importance about it all. By the way -- just out of idle curiosity -- when such people marry off their sons, do they give them a dowry?"

"It depends. I knew one Italian prince, as rich as a gold mine, one of the leading families in Tuscany, who would give millions to his sons when they married as he wished and, when they went against his wishes, cut them off with an income of twenty écus a month. Supposing Andrea were to marry someone of whom his father approved, he might give him one, two or three million. If it was with the daughter of a banker, for example, he might take an interest in his son's father-in-law's firm. On the other hand, suppose he was not pleased with his daughter-in-law: well, slap-bang, old Cavalcanti grabs the key to his safe, gives a double turn to the lock and Master Andrea is obliged to live like a young Parisian beau, marking cards and loading dice."

"No, these transmontane aristos often marry mere mortals: they are like Jupiter, they like mixing species. But tell me, my dear Monsieur Danglars, you're not thinking of marrying Andrea yourself are you, with all these questions?"

"The boy will find a Bavarian or Peruvian princess: he'll want a closed crown, an Eldorado with the Potosi running through it."

"But he's engaged to your daughter, I think?"

"Mademoiselle Danglars' dowry will certainly be fine, I don't doubt, especially if the telegraph doesn't get up to its tricks again."

"Albert?" said Danglars with a shrug of the shoulders. "Oh, he's not worried."

"But surely not Mademoiselle Danglars? Do you want Albert to cut poor Andrea's throat?"

"Why?"

"You're not telling me he isn't a good match?"

"I did so, but he said he was going to Dieppe with Madame de Morcerf, who was advised to take some sea air."

"Because it is the air she breathed when she was young." Monte Cristo let the allusion pass without comment.

"Just a moment! I think Mademoiselle Danglars is worth Monsieur de Morcerf."

"It's not just the dowry. But tell me, now we mention it…"

"What?"

"Why didn't you invite Morcerf and his family to your dinner?"

"My word, yes," said Danglars with a laugh. "It must be good for her."

"The fact is, Monsieur Morcerf and I have spoken a few times about this marriage, but Madame de Morcerf and Albert…"

"By golly, it might not be a bad investment," Danglars said. "And I am a speculator."

"But, when all's said and done," he continued, "while Albert may not be as rich as Mademoiselle Danglars, you cannot deny that he bears a fine name."

"Agreed, your name is a popular one, and it ennobled the title with which they sought to ennoble it; but you are too intelligent not to realize that, according to certain prejudices which are too deeply ingrained for them to be eradicated, a title five centuries old is better than one of only twenty years."

"Yet I imagine that the Morcerfs do not cede to the Cavalcantis?"

"Yes, but I like mine too," said Danglars.

"A little."

"The Morcerfs! Tell me, my dear Count, you are a noble man, aren't you?"

"And well versed in heraldry?"

"Because, even though I am not a baron by birth, I am at least called Danglars."

"Well, consider the paint on my coat of arms: it's drier than that on Morcerf's."

"And that," said Danglars, with an attempt at a sardonic smile, "is why I should prefer Monsieur Andrea Cavalcanti to Monsieur Albert de Morcerf."

"I think so."

"How can that be?"

"So?"

"So why are you giving him your daughter?"

"Just 'Fernand'?"

"What things?"

"Fernand."

"While he is not called Morcerf."

"Well, when I was a clerk, Morcerf was a mere fisherman."

"Nothing."

"What! He is not called Morcerf?"

"That is evidence either of great humility or of great pride," said Monte Cristo.

"Because Fernand and Danglars are two upstarts, both ennobled, both enriched and neither better than the other; except for some things that have been said about him and never about me."

"Are you sure?"

"Come now!"

"Fernand Mondego."

"Listen, my dear Count," Danglars went on. "Monsieur de Morcerf has been my friend, or rather my acquaintance, for thirty years. You know that I don't attach much importance to my coat of arms, since I have not forgotten where I came from."

"Not in the slightest."

"Am I! I ought to know him. He sold me enough fish."

"Impossible."

"What was his name then?"

"I was made a baron by someone, so that is what I am; he made himself a count, so that is what he is not."

"That's the mystery," said Danglars. "I confess, I'd give a lot to find out about it."

"I have connections everywhere…"

"I should be glad."

"I shall."

"Precisely."

"It wouldn't be hard if you really want to."

"That's it!" Danglars exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "I'll write this very day."

"Of course."

"In Janina?"

"About the affair of Ali Pasha?"

"Oh, I understand. What you have just said has refreshed my memory about the name Fernand Mondego. I heard it in Greece."

"Do that."

"Well, then. Write to your man in Janina and ask him what part was played in the catastrophe of Ali Tebelin by a Frenchman named Fernand."

"I suppose you have a correspondent in Greece?"

"I'll let you know."

"How could it be done?"

"And if you uncover some scandal…"

Danglars rushed out of the apartments and, in one bound, was in his carriage.