Edmond Dantes, Deputy from Marseilles

Beauchamp, Lucien Debray and Château-Renaud were not the only persons puzzled with regard to the enigmatical M. Dantès; all Paris was more or less bothered about him; his entire career prior to his appearance at the capital as the Deputy from Marseilles seemed shrouded in impenetrable mystery, and this was the more galling to the curious Parisians as his wonderful oratorical powers and his intense republicanism rendered him the cynosure of all eyes and made him the sensation of the hour. The Government had instituted investigations concerning him, but without result; even in Marseilles his antecedents were unknown; he had come there from the east utterly unheralded, attended only by a black servant, and bringing with him his son and daughter, but almost immediately he had plunged into politics, winning his way to the front with startling rapidity. From the first he had ardently espoused the cause of the working people, and such was his personal magnetism that he had made hosts of admirers, and had been chosen Deputy with hardly a dissenting voice. Some of the inhabitants of Marseilles, indeed, remembered a youthful sailor named Edmond Dantès, but they asserted that he had been dead many years, and that the Deputy was unlike him in every particular.

As the young men passed the Théâtre Français, on their way to the Chamber of Deputies, after a glass of sherry and a biscuit at Véry's, their attention was attracted by a crowd gathered around an immense poster spread upon the bill-board. There seemed no little excitement among the throng, a large proportion of whom appeared to be artisans and laborers, and loud expressions of admiration, accompanied by animated gestures, were heard. Nor were there wanting also words of deep denunciation and of significant threatening.