The 'mysterious lodger' and Madame Danglars's lover, who coldly divides their speculation profits, advises her to flee, and casts her off—keeping over a million for himself.
Lucien Debray is at last revealed as the 'mysterious lodger' of the discreet little house where he and Madame Danglars have long met—and as her partner in secret Bourse speculation with her husband's information. When she brings news of Danglars's flight, Debray reacts not as a lover but as a stockbroker: he reads the banker's farewell letter with cold self-control, then delivers a meticulous accounting of their six-month partnership, handing her 1,340,000 francs he had shrewdly withdrawn in advance, and advises her to counterfeit desertion and poverty and leave Paris. He offers no tenderness, only a careless bow and a loan she refuses, and once she has gone reckons his own remaining 1,060,000 francs, coolly regretting only that 'Mademoiselle de Villefort is dead...
I would have married her.' That same night he buys a fine house on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Self-interested to the last, Debray sheds his mistress as easily as he balances a ledger.
A poised, fashionable young Parisian gentleman, elegantly dressed, cool and methodical, buried in cravat and handkerchief when abroad to guard his incognito.
The self-interested lover who liquidates his affair with Madame Danglars for cash and comfort.