- Edmond: Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you: as Albert Mondego, the man!
- Edmond: There are 72,519 stones in my walls. I've counted them many times.
- Abbe Faria: But have you named them yet?
- Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?
- Abbe Faria: When I told them I had no idea where Count Spada hid his treasure, I lied.
- Edmond: You lied?
- Abbe Faria: I'm a priest, not a saint.
- Jacopo: I swear on my dead relatives - and even on the ones who are not feeling too good - I am your man forever!
- Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, "Vengeance is mine."
- Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.
- Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you.
- Edmond: Monseuir, I know you must hear this a great deal; I assure you I am innocent. Everyone must say that, I know, but I truly am.
- Dorleac: Innocent?
- Edmond: Yes.
- Dorleac: I know. I really do know.
- Edmond: You mock me?
- Dorleac: No, my dear Dantes. I know perfectly well that you are innocent. Why else would you be here? If you were truly guilty, there are a hundred prisons in France where they would lock you away. But Chateau d'If is where is they put the ones they're ashamed of.
- Dorleac: And if you're thinking just now 'Why me, oh God?' the answer is: God has nothing to do with it. In fact, God is never in France this time of year.
- Edmond: God has everything to do with it. He's everywhere. He sees everything.
- Dorleac: Alright. Let's make a bargain, shall we? You ask God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
- Luigi: So, mi amici, I would ask who you are, but in view of your shredded clothes and the fact that the Chateau d'If is two miles away... what's the point? As for me, I am Luigi Vampa, a smuggler and a thief. My men and I have come to this island to bury alive one of our number who attempted to keep some stolen gold for himself instead of sharing it with his comrades. Interestingly enough, there are some of his more loyal friends who are insisting that I grant him mercy. Which, of course, I cannot do, or I would quickly lose control of the whole crew. That is why you are such a fortunate find.
- Edmond: Why is that?
- Luigi: You provide me with a way to show a little mercy to Jacopo - that maggot you see tied up over there - while at the same time not appearing weak. And as a bonus, the lads will get to see a little sport as well.
- Edmond: How do I accomplish all this?
- Luigi: We watch you and Jacopo fight to the death. If Jacopo wins, we welcome him back to the crew. If you win, I have given Jacopo the chance to live, even if he did not take advantage of it, and you can take his place on the boat.
- Edmond: What if I win and I don't want to be a smuggler?
- Luigi: Then we slit your throat, and we're a bit shorthanded.
- [pause]
- Edmond: [smiles after consideration] I find that smuggling is the life for me, and would be delighted to kill your friend the maggot!
- Luigi: Oh, and by the way, Jacopo is the best knife fighter I have ever seen.
- Edmond: [unmoved, sarcastically] Perhaps you should get out more...
- Luigi: [laughs, shouts to his crew] Release Jacopo, and give him back his knife. And we'll let the games begin...
- Abbe Faria: With two of us digging, we can cover twice the ground. It'll only take us, oh... 8 years to reach the outer wall.
- [Edmond laughs]
- Abbe Faria: Ohh... and does something else demand your time? Some pressing appointment, perhaps?
- Mercedes: You would have to be a mother to truly appreciate the service you have done for my son and me. Monsieur, I will never forget you.
- Count of Monte Cristo: Please, madame, It was nothing; and I am sure in within a month you will not even remember my name
- [to Fernand Mondego]
- Count of Monte Cristo: May I steal your wife?
- Fernand: Excuse me?
- Count of Monte Cristo: For the waltz?
- Abbe Faria: Define Economics.
- Edmond: Economics is a science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.
- Abbe Faria: Translation?
- Edmond: Dig first, money later.
- Mercedes: I don't know what dark plan lies within you. Nor do I know by what design we were asked to live without each other these 16 years. But God has offered us a new beginning...
- Edmond: God?
- Mercedes: Don't slap His hand away.
- Edmond: Can I never escape Him?
- Mercedes: No, He is in everything. Even in a kiss.
- Fernand: Monte Cristo!
- Edmond: King's to you, Fernand.
- Fernand: Edmond? How did you...
- Edmond: How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure!
- Fernand: So you've taken Mercedes.
- Edmond: And everything else. Except your life.
- Fernand: Why are you doing this?
- Edmond: [pauses, remembering what Fernand said when he asked why he betrayed him] It's complicated. Let's just say it's vengeance for the life that you stole from me.
- Albert Mondego: May I ask who you are, sir?
- Count of Monte Cristo: For the present, your friend. Tomorrow, your host. For the short time formality stands between us, the Count of Monte Cristo.
- Abbe Faria: The stronger swordsman does not necessarily win. It is speed! Speed of hand, speed of mind.
- Abbe Faria: In return for your help, I offer something priceless.
- Edmond: My freedom?
- Abbe Faria: No, freedom can be taken away, as you well know. I offer knowledge, everything I have learned. I will teach you, oh, economics, mathematics, philosophy, science.
- Edmond: To read and write?
- Abbe Faria: Of course.
- Edmond: When do we start?
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: Mondego's the one who pulled the trigger! He'd never confess in a million years!
- Count of Monte Cristo: You're right, he wouldn't... but you just have.
- Mercedes: What's wrong?
- Fernand: I'm bankrupt. All my debts have been called in. Also, I am to be arrested.
- Mercedes: For what?
- Fernand: Piracy, corruption, and murder.
- Mercedes: Did you do all these things?
- Fernand: Yes. But there's simply not the time to talk about it. The gendarmes are on their way, apparently, so hurry up and pack something.
- Mercedes: I'm not going with you, Fernand.
- Fernand: [Fernand turns towards her and angrily breaks a mirror]
- [Panting]
- Fernand: You are my wife. I have made arrangements for us. We shall be very well taken care of. Now go and find my son.
- [Fernand walks briskly away from Mercedes]
- Mercedes: He's not your son.
- Fernand: [Fernand stops dead in his tracks] I beg your pardon?
- Mercedes: Albert Mondego is the son of Edmond Dantes.
- [pause]
- Mercedes: Why do you think I rushed off so quickly to marry you when Edmond was taken away?
- Fernand: [staring blankly in full realization] Premature.
- [Fernand steps towards Mercedes and stares piercingly down at her]
- Fernand: Well, aren't you a piece of work? So he's the bastard son of a dead traitor?
- [Mercedes smirks]
- Fernand: He always was disappointing.
- Jacopo: I bid you good afternoon, sir. I am here to purchase your lovely home.
- Mansion Owner: [laughing] The very cheek! I shall have you horsewhipped! Now get off my property, you vagabond, before I set the dogs on you, you hear?
- [Jacapo lowers the wagon lid and reveals the treasure. The mansion owner sobers up. Cut to a short time later, as the mansion owner, sitting in the driver's seat of the wagon, hands Jacopo the deed and the keys to the house]
- Jacopo: Thank you.
- Prison guard: [after accidentally throwing Dorleac off the cliff together with a supposedly dead body] We could have handled that a bit better.
- Mercedes: Albert, I found the note you left explaining where you'd gone. But now I must explain something to you. Where you've really come from. Albert, you are the son of Edmond Dantes. The man you know as the Count of Monte Cristo.
- [Albert Mondego turns to Fernand Mondego]
- Fernand: Well, I'm afraid it is true. You are the walking proof that your mother was as much of a whore in her younger years as she is today.
- Edmond: [explaining why he doesn't want to kill his betrayers] Death is too good for them. They must suffer as I suffered. They must see their world, all they hold dear, ripped from them as it was ripped from me.
- Jacopo: You will need a better name than Zatarra if you are to accomplish that.
- Edmond: [throwing Abbe's map into the fire] Then I shall become a Count.
- Edmond: If you ever presume to interfere in my affairs again, I will, I promise you, finish the job I started the day we met! Do you understand?
- Jacopo: I understand you are mad.
- Edmond: Mad? My enemies are falling into my traps perfectly!
- Jacopo: Mad, your grace, for ignoring this: you have a fortune, a beautiful woman who loves you. Take the money, take the woman, and live your life! Stop this plan, take what you have won!
- Edmond: I can't.
- Jacopo: Why not?... I'm still your man, Zatarra. I swore an oath I will protect you. Even if it means I must protect you from yourself. I'll drive you home now.
- Abbe Faria: The slot opens twice a day. Once in the morning for your toilet bucket, which is where we hide the dirt. And once more in the evening for your plate. Between those times, we can work all day without fear of discovery.
- Edmond: So neglect becomes our ally.
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: I require seventy percent.
- Fernand: And yet you'll only get fifty.
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: Done.
- On Screen Text: [first lines, the text that appears on screen] In 1814, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of Elba, off the coast of Italy. Fearing an attempt to rescue him, his British captors would shoot anyone who came ashore...
- On Screen Text: ...no matter how innocent or desperate.
- Abbe Faria: Strange that a chief magistrate would burn evidence of a treasonous conspiracy, and then imprison the only man who was aware of monsieur Clarion's connection to that conspiracy.
- Edmond: He was protecting someone.
- Abbe Faria: Ah. A dear friend, perhaps?
- Edmond: No. No. A politician like Villefort would have rid himself of such friends. Clarion could be a relative. A close relative, possibly...
- [as realization dawns on him, he overturns a table in anger]
- Edmond: No! Villefort's father was a colonel in Napoleon's army. Villefort wasn't protecting Clarion. He was protecting himself. Danglars, who falsely said he saw Napoleon give me that letter. Mondego, who told Villefort I had it. And Villefort himself, who sent me here.
- Abbe Faria: [clapping] Bravo, Edmond. Bravo.
- Count of Monte Cristo: This Edmond, you loved him?
- Mercedes: Yes.
- Count of Monte Cristo: For how long?
- Mercedes: For all of my life.
- Count of Monte Cristo: And how long after he died before you married the Count?
- Mercedes: That isn't fair.
- Count of Monte Cristo: We've reached your home, Countess.
- Mercedes: [getting out of the carriage] You're right. You cannot be my Edmond.
- Count of Monte Cristo: Well, there you are. You said it yourself. Edmond Dantes is dead. Good night.
- Danglar: [while he is about to be hanged by Monte Cristo from a ship's plank, holding onto Cristo's coat] Who are you?
- Edmond: I'm the Count of Monte Cristo...
- [beat]
- Edmond: But my friends call me Edmond Dantes!
- Danglar: [in full realisation] Dantes...
- Edmond: [Edmond knocks away Danglar's hands, hanging him, walks away calmly and speaks to the chief Gendarme] Cut him down before he can't talk...
- Edmond: Señor Vampa, allow Jacopo to live. He's already suffered enough with the prospect of being buried alive. The men that wanted to see some sport have seen it. Those who wanted mercy for Jacopo will get it. And by keeping me and Jacopo, you will have yet another skilled sailor and fighter for your crew.
- Luigi: [considering] It's a deal.
- Edmond: [visiting the Chateau d'If] You were right, Priest. You were right. This I promise you... and God: all that was used for vengeance will now be used for good. So rest in peace, my friend.
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: How is your father?
- Fernand: Alive, unfortunately.
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: We share the same misfortune.
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: I am the chief magistrate, an official of the new regime. And I cannot afford to have my own father mixed up in treasonous affairs!
- Colonel Villefort, aka: Clarion: You know... in the end, treason is a matter of dates. And I shall be the patriot, and you the traitor, when the emperor returns.
- Valentina Villefort: Stop it. Stop, you old ruin. Those days are over. Napoleon Bonaparte is no longer the emperor of anything. And if you continue to dabble in this lunacy, you run an excellent chance of being arrested and ruining our entire family, all because of your idiotic sympathies.
- Colonel Villefort, aka: Clarion: Well, at least I have sympathies.
- J.F. Villefort, Chief Magistrate: For God's sake, Father, all Valentina is saying is that as a family, our fates are intertwined. Surely you can see that.
- Colonel Villefort, aka: Clarion: See? Ah! I'm an old ruin. I don't see as well as I did.
- Abbe Faria: 2,500 cubic centimeters of rock and dust a day for 365 days.
- Edmond: Equals three-and-a-half meters a year, 12 feet, a foot a month.
- [grunts]
- Edmond: Three inches a week.
- Abbe Faria: In Italian.
- [whip cracking]
- Edmond: Ancora tre metri e un mezzo.
- Edmond: [leaving Luigi in Marseilles] Some day, I may come to find you. A man is always in need of a good friend.