1) In response to Mercédès’ gratitude to the count for securing Albert’s safety, the count remarks that saving a man, sparing his father from torment, and calming the sensitive nature of a woman are components not of a good deed but of a humane act. Do you think Fernand recognizes the bitter irony of the count’s words? And has the count effectively abandoned his humanity and essentially become a vampire, able to be satisfied only by the destruction of others?

2) The narrator identifies Mercédès—but not Fernand—by name; why the differing treatment?

3) Do you think Mercédès already knows who the count is? And do you think she would give up her life to be reunited with Dantès?

Final sentence of chapter:

“‘Most decidedly,’ said he, ‘men are not equal, and I must beg my father to develop this theorem in the Chamber of Peers.”

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