The Encounter. the enCOUNTer. Get it? God, I hate puns. Congrats on making it to chapter 90.

Points of discussion:

1. How surprised were you by the way the chapter ended?

2. How do you feel about Albert after this? I mean, he has been rather spoiled at times and hot-headed at others, but what he said at the end took something special.

3. How do you think Fernand is going to take this? I mean, Albert specifically said he wanted everyone to bear witness to what he said, and then he publically said he approved of what the count did in bringing the story to light, and thanked him for not doing anything worse. That's got to get out. And I feel like turning his son against him like this might even be better revenge than killing his son (I mean in his mind where he thought killing the son was a good idea.)

There were a lot of other little details that I think are worth highlighting:

1. Again we got to see the count be a badass with a pistol, and we learned that he's been practicing with all of the fencing masters in Paris, and beating them. But he hasn't used those skills in a real situation yet.

2. I thought it was touching that he thought of Haydée and asked Maximillin if he loved anyone because he didn't want her to be alone after he was gone.

3. And we learned how much money he really has. 20 million francs that Bertuccio knows are buried on Monte Cristo, and another 60 million in property, which is interesting for two reasons. First, he really trusts Bertuccio. But more than that, I think a lot of us have been wondering about his spending in Paris. Since we didn't know how much he had, we didn't know what it meant for him to take out 6 million from Danglars, or to go around giving away 50,000 franc diamonds and buying houses for the same price. Well. back in chapter 81, while Danglars spoke to Andrea, they said that the 500,000 francs Danglars was going to give her daughter would be worth a yearly income of 25,000 francs, or 5% of the total. The count is smarter than Danglars, so it's safe to say he can get at least 5% as well. So that would be about 4 million francs a year. In other words, he isn't remotely hurting himself by blowing 6 million in Paris in one summer. Maybe he'll touch his capital a little, but it's not like he's going broke here. It also means that spending 50,000 on a house or giving away the diamond was just over 1% of his yearly income.

Last line:

"Ah, only now, from this day onwards, am I really certain of being an emissary of God."

Link to the last discussion

The next discussion will be up on Monday.