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XIII . The Duel That evening the Count was sitting in his box at the Opera when the door opened and Albert came in , white with anger , with Beauchamp and another friend behind him . “ You have destroyed my father , ” Albert said loudly , so that the people in the next boxes could hear . “ You will fight me tomorrow . ” “ I accept , ” the Count answered calmly . “ Your friends can arrange everything with mine . ” Later that evening the witnesses agreed on the details . The two men would fight with pistols the next morning at eight o’clock , in the woods of Vincennes , just outside Paris . He went home and spent the evening quietly cleaning his pistols . Late at night his servant came to say that a lady in a veil wanted to see him . When she lifted the veil , he saw Mercédès . “ Edmond , ” she said , “ you will not kill my son . ” The Count stepped back as if she had struck him . For twenty - three years nobody had called him by that name . “ Madame , ” he said coldly , “ you are mistaken . Edmond Dantès is dead . ” “ No . I knew you the moment I saw you , and I have known you ever since by your voice . Edmond , I know why you hate my husband , and I know that you are taking revenge for the past . But Albert has done nothing wrong . ” “ You do not know why I hate him , ” the Count said . He opened a box and took out an old yellow paper . It was the letter that Danglars had written with his left hand twenty - three years earlier , which the Count had found among the papers of the prison . “ Read this . ” Mercédès read it , and her face became as white as the paper . “ Fernand posted this letter , ” the Count said . “ Because of it I spent fourteen years in a cell under the ground . Because of it my father died of hunger . And because of it you married the man who sent me there . ” “ I did not know , ” she whispered . “ God is my witness , I did not know . But I waited for you , Edmond . I cried for you every day , and I prayed for you every night . I thought you were dead . Have pity on me , and on my son . He is all I have . ” The Count looked at her for a long time . Then he understood that if he killed Albert , he would kill Mercédès too , and he could not do that . “ Your son will live , ” he said at last . “ And you ? ” “ I promised to fight , and I shall go to the meeting . But I shall not fire , and your son will kill me . ” Mercédès took his hand and pressed it to her lips . “ You are still the man I loved , ” she said softly , and then she left him alone . She went home through the dark streets and climbed the stairs to her son’s room . Albert was still awake , writing letters to his friends in case he died in the morning . His mother sat down beside him and told him the whole story that she had kept secret for twenty - three years : the young sailor from Marseilles , the wedding feast , the letter , the prison on its black rock , and the old man who had died of hunger while he waited for his son . Then she told him who the Count of Monte Cristo really was . Albert listened without a word , and when she had finished , he hid his face in his hands .
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