Book excerpt: The Count of Monte-Cristo is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, written with the collaboration of Auguste Maquet and completed in 1844. It is partially inspired by real events, very distantly borrowed from the life of Pierre Picaud. The book tells how, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVIII, on February 24, 1815, the day Napoleon left the island of Elba, Edmond Dantès, a young sailor of nineteen, mate of the ship Le Pharaon, landed in Marseille for s 'get engaged the next day with the Catalan Mercédès. Betrayed by jealous "friends", he was denounced as a Bonapartist conspirator and locked up in a jail in the Château d'If, off the coast of Marseille.