Danglars awakens as if in a dream as he looks about the cavernous cell into which he has become imprisoned. Outside his cell door, he smells food and rises to find a guard eating, which at first disgusts Danglars. How could anyone eat such dreadful food, he thinks.

Danglars allows several hours to pass, believing that someone will soon bring him something to eat. The first guard is replaced by a second. This new guard also has brought food with him, food that increases Danglars’s appetite. He asks the man for something to eat. The guard asks what Danglars would like. Danglars replies a fowl. Almost instantaneously, a cooked fowl is brought forward. But before Danglars, who by now is very hungry, can eat one bite, the guard informs him that the food is not free. Danglars must pay for it. When Danglars asks how much the food costs, he is told an exorbitant figure: 100,000 francs. At first Danglars refuses to spend that much money for his dinner, but his hunger gets the best of him. He does not have that much cash on him, but the guard tells him that he can write a check on his account.

Every time Danglars requests food, the terms are the same. He is charged a lot of money. Finally, Danglars figures out that the bandits are out to get all his money. Somehow they know exactly how much money he possesses, which is almost five million francs, and they will not stop until he turns it all over to them. Danglars at first tells them that he would rather die than give them all his money. But he relents until all he has left is 50,000 francs. From that point on, Danglars decides to stop eating. He lasts several days before giving them everything he owns.

It is at this point that the count appears. The count asks Danglars if he is ready to repent for all the evil he has done. Danglars wants to know what he has done that was so wrong, so the count lists all Danglars’s offenses, such as allowing Edmond Dantes’s father to die of starvation and having Edmond sent to prison. Then the count reveals that he is Dantes.

Danglars is allowed to go free with his last small portion of money. When he leans over a small stream to drink, Danglars sees his own reflection. His hair has completely changed to white.

The last chapter of the novel takes place on October fifth. It is the day for which Maximilian has promised to wait before he commits suicide. Maximilian is on a yacht, heading for the island of Monte Cristo to meet the count. The two men embrace when Maximilian arrives on the shore. The count attempts to talk Maximilian out of taking his life, but Maximilian has no more will to live.

The count takes the young man to the mansion he built in the cave where he discovered the treasure left to him by the abbey. While seated together at a table, the count, after trying to persuade Maximilian one more time to forget about suicide, gives Maximilian a pill. Maximilian swallows it and enters a state of mind that he believes is death.

In the meantime, the count motions to a woman to enter the room. The woman is Valentine. She is overjoyed to see Maximilian even though her lover is under the spell of a drug and does not respond to her. The count and Valentine have a conversation while they wait for Maximilian to recover. Haydee also enters the room and joins in the talk. Valentine has become a close friend of Haydee’s as she has spent a month on the island, waiting for the count to play out his scheme. Valentine tells the count that Haydee is in love with him. The count has trouble believing this. He is ready to release Haydee from her duties as his slave. Haydee does not want her freedom if it means leaving him.

Finally Maximilian awakens and beholds Valentine. She explains to him that the count had given her a drug that made it look as if she had died. He did so to save her life. In a letter, the count explains to Maximilian that he made Maximilian go through the torture of believing Valentine was dead to deepen his love. The count, having suffered as he did in prison, thinks that it was through his suffering that he came to understand true love. As a father figure for Maximilian, he thought Maximilian had to endure a similar fate.

In the end, the count gives most of his wealth as well as his Paris houses to Maximilian. Then the count and Haydee sail away.