As for Monte Cristo, his head was bowed, his arms hung listless. He was crushed under the weight of twenty-four years’ memories. He was not thinking of Albert, Beauchamp, or Château-Renaud, nor yet of anyone around him; he was thinking of the courageous woman who had come to him to crave her son’s life. He had offered her his, and now she had saved it by confessing a terrible family secret, capable of killing for ever the young man’s love for her.

— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, 1846