The corrupt foster child grows into a monster, torturing his foster-mother Assunta to death for her money and vanishing.
Benedetto, Villefort's buried-alive bastard saved by Bertuccio, came to a monstrous flowering of the wickedness he showed from infancy. Tormenting his doting foster-mother Assunta endlessly for money, he at last returned one night with two dissolute companions, seized her, barricaded the house, and dragged her toward the brazier to torture out where her savings were hidden—crying 'Put her to torture and she'll soon tell us.' Her clothes caught fire in the struggle; the three fled as she burned, and she was found next morning dreadfully burnt and dying, the house rifled and robbed. Benedetto 'never again appeared at Rogliano,' and Bertuccio, who has neither seen nor heard of him since, prays he is dead.
But the count observes darkly that 'the wicked are not so easily disposed of,' hinting the boy lives on as some future instrument of retribution.
A handsome youth with large deep-blue eyes and hair too light for his fair complexion, his face vivid with a cruel, malicious vivacity.
Villefort's discarded bastard, now a murderous vagabond loose in the world.