In Paris, three months later, Albert impatiently awaits the arrival of Monte Cristo for a luncheon party. The first guest to arrive is Lucien Debray, the tall, blond Secretary to the Minister of the Interior (we discover later that he is Danglars' wife's lover). Among the other guests is Captain Maximilien Morrel, a tall, dark, and broad-chested young man who is the only son of Monsieur Morrel, the owner of the lost Pharaon, which Monte Cristo financially "resurrected" and thereby saved Morrel's shipping firm. Young Morrel, it is revealed, once saved a nobleman's life in Constantinople, and because Morrel's father's life was once "miraculously" saved, Maximilien tries to do "some heroic action" every year.
Albert then tells his guests about his own "miraculous" rescue by the Count of Monte Cristo. One of the guests says that no such "Count" exists; he knows all of Europe's nobility, and he has never heard of the Count nor of the island of Monte Cristo. But, at the very stroke of ten-thirty, Monte Cristo is announced.
Over lunch, Monte Cristo impresses them all with his pillbox, fashioned out of a magnificent, hollowed-out emerald; then he tells them of his daring adventures with Luigi Vampa, the bandit king, and mentions that his steward, Bertuccio, was once a bandit and that he, Monte Cristo, was influential enough to save the life of the handsome Peppino, Vampa's bandit-liaison. In turn, Albert tells Monte Cristo about his fiancée, Eugénie Danglars (the daughter of the purser on the Pharaon, that Dantès was once to have commanded). The young men enjoy the story and are so impressed by Albert's guest that they plead to be allowed to help Monte Cristo secure a lodging, but the Count tells them that he already has a Paris address — 30 Champs Elysées (Paris' most famous boulevard). They are all stunned at such costly originality, and thus, they beg to introduce him to a Parisian mistress of their choice. But Monte Cristo says that he has already chosen a mistress; she is his "slave," whom he bought in Constantinople, and who speaks nothing but modern Greek. Clearly, Monte Cristo is one of the most extraordinary men whom any of the young Parisian noblemen have ever known.
