1. When you saw the title of this chapter, whom did you expect it would involve?

2. How do you feel about the ambiguous dynamic between the count and Haydée? Do her feelings for him seem like a natural outgrowth of his protection of her? Or merely a stereotypical male fantasy?

3. The narrator takes us out of the room during Fernand’s suicide, giving us only an exterior description of the sound and the smoke of the gunshot. Do you think Dumas made this choice in order to spare his readers? Or to emphasize Fernand’s utter isolation?

Final sentence of chapter:

“So, at the very moment when the wheels of the cab were clattering over the cobbles under the archway, a shot rang out and a whiff of dark smoke curled out through one of those bedroom windows, shattered by the force of the detonation.”

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