1. What do you make of Beauchamp’s journalistic integrity? On the one hand, he goes to great lengths to verify the claim about Fernand; on the other, he offers to keep the truth a secret for Albert’s sake. Does he deserve praise? Or are his ethics only skin deep (a superficiality suggested, perhaps, by his name)?

2. Like Villefort in Chapter 7 (“The Interrogation”), Albert burns the evidence of his father’s treachery, but in neither case does fire seem to wash away the filial sense of shame. Beauchamp suggests that Albert shouldn’t let his father’s shame burden him, pointing out that few men have emerged from the Napoleonic period unsullied, but is there room for this refreshingly modern perspective in a story dominated by obsession with the past?

Final sentence of chapter:

“‘Yes,’ said Albert, ‘let’s go and see the count. I like him.’”

previous chapter discussion

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