When Danglars saw his wife leaving in her carriage — without Debray — he never suspected that she was leaving to meet her old lover, Villefort. Of course, however, she never suspected the extent of the bad news which Villefort would have for her. Villefort tells her very straightforwardly that they are both in extremely serious trouble. He reminds her that Monte Cristo mentioned a baby's skeleton having been unearthed. That would have been impossible, Villefort says, because while he was burying the newborn baby, he was stabbed by a Corsican and left for dead. Afterward, he was critically ill for three months, but when he was able to travel, he returned to Auteuil and dug up the entire garden area, searching for the makeshift casket. There was no casket nor was there a baby's corpse. Someone dug it up and is now waiting to make them both pay for their crime.
Madame Danglars screams: "You buried my child alive!" Villefort loathes these accusations and tries to frighten her. Perhaps she talked in her sleep . . . perhaps she is to blame. Whatever the reason for their present predicament, someone now knows about them both. "We are lost," he says. But he vows to discover who Monte Cristo is and why he lied about the baby's corpse being "accidentally" discovered — when indeed it was not.
