1) By reusing the title of Chapter 2, Dumas makes an explicit comparison between the two father-son pairs; in what ways do the dynamics of each pair resemble and differ from each other?

2) Noirtier declares that “[t]here is no such thing as murder in politics… you don’t kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that’s all”—is this simply the character speaking about the atmosphere in the story or is it also the author expressing his own cynical worldview?

3) Noirtier’s ruse of altering his appearance in order to conceal himself from the authorities is a pretty obvious ploy—at least to us as modern readers. Do you think it would’ve struck readers 165 years ago as ingenious and novel?

Final sentence of chapter:

”Then he put on a traveling cap, called his valet, giving him a look that forbade him to ask any of the thousand questions that were on his lips, settled his account with the hotel, leapt into the carriage which was waiting for him, with the horses ready harnessed, learnt in Lyon that Bonaparte had just entered Grenoble and, in the midst of the turmoil that he found throughout the whole length of the road, arrived in Marseille, a prey to all the agonized feelings that enter a man's heart when he has ambition and has been honored for the first time.”

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