Discovery of the Treasure

After escaping from the Chateau d'If and being rescued by the crew of the smuggling vessel The Young Amelia, Edmond Dantes, now calling himself the Maltese sailor, spends months working among the smugglers, learning the coasts and biding his time. His burning desire to return to the Island of Monte Cristo, where the Abbe Faria told him the treasure of Cardinal Spada was hidden, grows with each passing voyage. An opportunity finally presents itself when the patron of The Young Amelia proposes the island as a neutral ground for a smuggling operation. Dantes, feigning a serious injury after a staged fall, convinces his comrades to leave him alone on the island with a supply of biscuit, a gun, powder, and a pickaxe.

The Search and the Explosion

Once alone, Dantes, agile and light, springs up and hastens to the spot where the marks he had noted on the rocks terminated. Recalling the tale of the Arabian fisherman, he exclaims, "Now, open sesame!" Following the clues from Faria's reconstructed will, he traces the marks to a small, hidden creek. He deduces that Cardinal Spada had entered this creek, concealed his boat, and followed the notches in the rock to bury his treasure. Dantes finds a large, circular rock that he believes was lowered, not raised, to seal the entrance. Unable to move it by hand, he uses the horn of powder left by his friend Jacopo to blast the rock from its base. The explosion lifts the upper rock, shatters the lower one, and reveals an iron ring set into a square flagstone.

The Grotto and the Coffer

Inserting his lever into the ring, Dantes heaves the flagstone open, revealing steps descending into a subterranean grotto. He descends, finding not the mephitic darkness he expected, but a cavern lit by a dim, bluish light entering through crevices. The walls are of granite that sparkles like diamonds. Recalling the cardinal's will, which specified the treasure was in "the farthest angle of the second opening," Dantes searches for the second grotto. He sounds the walls with his pickaxe and finds a section that gives a hollow echo. Striking it, pieces of stucco fall away, exposing a large white stone. He attacks the wall, discovering the stones are merely placed one upon the other and covered with stucco. He inserts his pickaxe and levers the stones away, opening the second, lower and more gloomy grotto. In the dark angle at the left of the opening, he attacks the ground with his pickaxe. At the fifth or sixth blow, the pickaxe strikes against an iron substance. He clears the earth to reveal an oaken coffer bound with cut steel, bearing the arms of the Spada family on a silver plate.

The Immense Wealth

Dantes forces the coffer open with his pickaxe. Inside, three compartments divide the chest. The first blazes with piles of golden coin. The second contains bars of unpolished gold. In the third, Dantes grasps handfuls of diamonds, pearls, and rubies, which sound like hail against glass as they fall. Overcome with frenzy, he rushes from the cavern, leaping onto a rock to behold the sea, alone with these unheard-of treasures. He returns, falls to his knees, and utters a prayer intelligible to God alone. He then sets to work counting his fortune: a thousand ingots of gold, each weighing from two to three pounds; twenty-five thousand crowns, each worth about eighty francs, bearing the effigies of Pope Alexander VI and his predecessors; and ten double handfuls of pearls, diamonds, and other gems, many of which are mounted by the most famous workmen. The total amounts to nearly thirteen million francs.

The Aftermath and Transformation

The discovery of this treasure is the pivotal event that allows Dantes to become the Count of Monte Cristo. He carefully conceals the treasure, filling his pockets with gems and restoring the cave to its wild state. When the smugglers return, he feigns continued injury and departs with them to Leghorn. There, he sells four of his smallest diamonds for a substantial sum, buys a yacht, and returns to Monte Cristo to retrieve the entire treasure, storing it in a secret locker on his new vessel. This immense wealth provides him with the unlimited credit and resources he needs to insinuate himself into Parisian high society, where he systematically destroys the lives of those who wronged him: Danglars, Fernand Mondego, and Gerard de Villefort. The treasure is not merely a fortune; it is the engine of his divine retribution.