Story so far
Mercédès, having watched her son Albert de Morcerf sail for Africa, returns alone to the humble house in the Allées de Meilhan—old Louis Dantès's former home, now given her by the Count of Monte Cristo (Edmond Dantès)—and weeps bitterly in the jessamine arbor. When Edmond appears, she astonishes him: she neither hates nor blames him, for he spared her son's life, and turns all reproach upon herself—'it is myself that I blame, myself that I hate.' Confessing she was 'the most guilty' of his victims, base and cowardly where the others were merely wicked, she calls herself a renegade who denied God and was abandoned by him, while Edmond, who kept faith, was sustained. Aged by grief—'a woman of thirty-nine' who looks fifty—she wants nothing for herself, living 'between two graves': that of the Edmond she loved and that of the husband Edmond destroyed, whom she approves the killing of yet must pray for.
She asks only one thing in the world, 'the happiness of my son,' and, refusing all fortune he offers unless Albert consents, parts from him pointing to heaven as the place they shall meet, murmuring his name to the empty window as his ship-smoke fades.
Appearance
A woman of thirty-nine aged to look fifty, hair silvered by grief, eyes rimmed with purple from weeping, her brow wrinkled, her old beauty faded, in plain mourning.
Role
The fallen countess who blames only herself, forgives Edmond, and lives on solely for her son.
Relationships
Edmond Dantès — Her lost love, whom she refuses to reproach, blaming only her own cowardice for the ruin of both their lives.
Albert de Morcerf — Her son, now gone to war, whose happiness is the single thing she still asks of life.
Louis Dantès — Edmond's father, in whose old Marseilles house, given her by the count, she now lives in prayer.
Sources — 14 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 3
- Dantès's beautiful, steadfast Catalan betrothed, loyal to Edmond and only sisterly to Fernand.
Chapter 5
- Her wedding shattered by Edmond's arrest, Mercédès collapses into grief.
Chapter 13
- Left utterly alone, Mercédès grieves for Edmond and is saved from despair only by her faith.
Chapter 17
- Left utterly alone, Mercédès grieves for Edmond and is saved from despair only by her faith.
Chapter 27
- Worn down by grief and Fernand's persistence, Mercédès at last married him and became a Paris countess and mother.
Chapter 41
- Face to face with her son's rescuer, Mercédès turns pale and trembling, half-recognizing the ghost of the love she buried.
Chapter 68
- Absent but ever-present, Mercédès pointedly avoids the count's dinner yet, back from Tréport, speaks of no one but him and begs him to her ball.
Chapter 70
- Hosting her ball, Mercédès watches the Count refuse every morsel under her husband's roof and grows certain his abstinence is a pointed message to her.
Chapter 71
- Mercédès leads the Count to her conservatory and, tearfully offering fruit and friendship, all but reveals she knows who he is—only to be gently refused.
Chapter 88
- Bedridden with shame at her husband's disgrace, Mercédès begs Albert to keep the Count's friendship—then, guessing all, secretly has her son followed into danger.
Chapter 89
- Mercédès goes veiled to Edmond, names him, and on her knees wins her son's life—learning at last the letter and the fourteen years' dungeon that made him an avenger.
Chapter 91
- Mercédès quietly packs to leave Fernand forever, gives Albert her father's name Herrera, and accepts Edmond's buried betrothal treasure as her dowry to a convent.
Chapter 106
- In a bare, cold lodging, the fallen countess bears her poverty with a queen's dignity, parting from Albert as he sells himself to the army and she retires to Marseilles.
Chapter 112
- Alone in the old Marseilles house after seeing Albert sail to Africa, Mercédès weeps before Edmond, blaming only herself, refusing to reproach him, and asking nothing but her son's happiness.