time after having arrested Dantes, he married and left Marseilles;
no doubt but he has been as lucky as the rest."

"God may seem sometimes to forget for a time," said the abbe, "while His
justice reposes, but there always comes a moment when He remembers."

* * * * *

Early in 1838 a certain Count of Monte Cristo became a great figure in
the life of Paris. His name awakened thoughts of romance and dazzling
wealth in the minds of all. It was Albert, the son of the Count de
Morcerf, who first introduced the Count of Monte Cristo to the high
society of Paris. They had become acquainted at Rome, where Monte Cristo
had been able to render a great service to the Viscount Albert de
Morcerf and his friend, the Baron Franz d'Epinay.

All sorts of stories were afloat in Paris as to the history of this
Count of Monte Cristo. When he went to the opera he was accompanied by a
beautiful Greek girl, named Haidee, whose guardian he was.

But nothing ruffled Monte Cristo. Calmness and deliberation marked all
his movements; in some respects he was more like a machine than a human
being. Everything he said he would do was done precisely. And now the
schemes he had long studied in secret he had begun to carry through as
certainly and relentlessly as Fate.

M. de Villefort, now _procureur du roi,_ had a daughter by his first
wife, for he had married a second time. Her name was Valentine, and at
the command of her father, but not by her own wish, she was engaged to
the Baron Franz d'Epinay. She loved a young military officer named
Maximilian Morrel, a son of the Marseilles shipowner. But neither of
them had dared to avow their affection for each other to Valentine's
father.

Meanwhile, the tide of fortune seemed to have turned with Baron
Danglars. His business had suffered many losses, but his greatest loss
of all was due to some false news about the price of shares which had
been telegraphed to Paris by means which Monte Cristo could have
explained.

The baron's daughter was engaged to Albert de Morcerf, but the Count of
Morcerf had now come under a cloud, for his betrayal of Ali Pasha had
been made public; and perhaps the Count of Monte Cristo could have told
how the truth came out at last. So the baron did not hesitate to break
the engagement, and to accept as the suitor for his daughter a dashing
young man known as Count Cavalcanti, who had been introduced to Paris by
Monte Cristo, but concerning