Monsieur Morrel Quotes

“There’s a providence that watches over the deserving.”

“M. Morrel has always been exceedingly kind to me,” replied Dantès.

“He is the most estimable, the most trustworthy creature in the world, and I will venture to say, there is not a better seaman in all the merchant service.”

“Thanks, Cocles; you are the pearl of cashiers.” Cocles went away perfectly happy, for this eulogium of M. Morrel, himself the pearl of the honest men of Marseilles, flattered him more than a present of fifty crowns.

Fourteen years had changed the worthy merchant, who, in his thirty-sixth year at the opening of this history, was now in his fiftieth; his hair had turned white, time and sorrow had ploughed deep furrows on his brow, and his look, once so firm and penetrating, was now irresolute and wandering, as if he feared being forced to fix his attention on some particular thought or person.

“Well,” returned Morrel, “it is a cruel thing to be forced to say, but, already used to misfortune, I must habituate myself to shame. I fear I shall be forced to suspend payment.”

“In business, sir,” said he, “one has no friends, only correspondents.”

“Shall I tell you plainly one thing, sir? I dread almost as much to receive any tidings of my vessel as to remain in doubt. Uncertainty is still hope.”

“I know there was no one in fault but destiny. It was the will of God that this should happen, blessed be his name.”

“I shall expect you,” returned Morrel; “and I will pay you—or I shall be dead.”

“If I live, all would be changed; if I live, interest would be converted into doubt, pity into hostility; if I live I am only a man who has broken his word, failed in his engagements—in fact, only a bankrupt. If, on the contrary, I die, remember, Maximilian, my corpse is that of an honest but unfortunate man. Living, my best friends would avoid my house; dead, all Marseilles will follow me in tears to my last home. Living, you would feel shame at my name; dead, you may raise your head and say, ‘I am the son of him you killed, because, for the first time, he has been compelled to break his word.‘”

“Thanks to the influence of M. Morrel, to whom, next to my father, I owe every blessing I enjoy, every difficulty has been removed.”