A man capitalizes on his remarkable resemblance to another man to steal the other's life and identity. [Celebrated Crimes is an 8-volume collection of 18 essays by Alexandre Dumas. Each essay is based upon historical facts.]
About the end of the reign of the Emperor Paul I--that is to say, towards the middle of the first year of the nineteenth century--just as four o'clock in the afternoon was sounding from the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, whose gilded vane overlooks the ramparts of the fortress, a crowd, composed of all sorts and conditions of people, began to gather in front of a house which belonged to General Count Tchermayloff, formerly military governor of a fair-sized town in the government of Pultava. The first spectators had been attracted by the preparations which they saw had been made in the middle of the courtyard for administering torture with the knout. One of the general's serfs, he who acted as barber, was to be the victim.
An orphan at three years old, he had been brought up at first by a relation who turned him out for theft; afterwards by two sisters, his cousins, who were already beginning to take alarm at his abnormal perversity. This pale and fragile being, an incorrigible thief, a consummate hypocrite, and a cold-blooded assassin, was predestined to an immortality of crime, and was to find a place among the most execrable monsters for whom humanity has ever had to blush; his name was Antoine-Francois Derues.
This is an open confession, true and particular account of a certain series of events leading up to a certain crime by Marie Leroux and her accomplice Claude Perreguad. This is a history of retribution which overtook the criminals than the circumstantial deeds for which they were punished.
It was the Day of the Assumption in the year 1825; the sun had been up some four or five hours, and the long Via da Forcella, lighted from end to end by its slanting rays, cut the town in two, like a ribbon of watered silk. Nisida, the beloved daughter of Solomon, the fisherman, was the loveliest flower of the island from which she derived her name. The priests had already begun to sing the death hymn; the executioner was ready, the procession had set out, when Solomon the fisherman appeared suddenly on the threshold of the prison, his eyes aflame and his brow radiant with the halo of the patriarchs. The old man drew himself up to his full height, and raising in one hand the reddened knife, said in a sublime voice, "The sacrifice is fulfilled. God did not send His angel to stay the hand of Abraham."
During the reign of Louis XIV, a dramatic family affaire occured at the Ganges castle. It is the story of ravishing marquise of Ganges who was nicknamed the "la belle provencale". She assassinated by her two brother-laws whose advances she refused. They were aided by her husband who wanted to inherit her grand fortune.She survived the sword wounds inflicted on her but died after nine days due to the poisoning. Her assassinators received the death sentence and her husband was banished.
On June 2, 1630, Father Urbain Grandier, the parish priest of St.-Pierre-du-Marche of Loudun, France, was accused of witchcraft by a group of Ursuline nuns. Grandier, a politically-influential priest with a worldly lifestyle, scandalous affairs, and romantic adventures, had made many enemies. In 1618, Grandier had written a sarcastic discourse about Cardinal Richelieu. By 1630, Richelieu had become one of the most powerful men in France, and would play an important role in the Loudun case.
The beginning of the nineteenth century was a time of audacious enterprises and strange vicissitudes of fortune. Whilst Western Europe in turn submitted and struggled against a sub-lieutenant who made himself an emperor, who at his pleasure made kings and destroyed kingdoms, the ancient eastern part of the Continent; like mummies which preserve but the semblance of life, was gradually tumbling to pieces, and getting parcelled out amongst bold adventurers who skirmished over its ruins. Without mentioning local revolts which produced only short-lived struggles and trifling changes, of administration, such as that of Djezzar Pacha, who refused to pay tribute because he thought himself impregnable in his citadel of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, or that of Passevend-Oglou Pacha, who planted himself on the walls of Widdin as defender of the Janissaries against the institution of the regular militia decreed by Sultan Selim at Stamboul, there were wider spread rebellions which attacked the constitution of the Turkish Empire and diminished its extent; amongst them that of Czerni-Georges, which raised Servia to the position of a free state; of Mahomet Ali, who made his pachalik of Egypt into a kingdom; and finally that of the man whose, history we are about to narrate, Ali Tepeleni, Pacha of Janina, whose long resistance to the suzerain power preceded and brought about the regeneration of Greece.
During the reign of France's King Louis XIV, D'Artagnan and three musketeers unite to defend the honor of Anne of Austria against the plots of Cardinal Richeliu.
„Sbohem, všechny city, které povznášejí srdce! Zastupoval jsem Prozřetelnost, abych odměnil dobré. Teď ať mi postoupísvé místo Bůh mstitel, abych potrestal zlé!"
Je rok 1815. Lodní důstojník Edmond Dantès se chystá oženit s krásnou Mercedes. Intriky závistivého účetního Danglarse a žárlivost soka v lásce Fernanda způsobí, že Dantès je zatčen coby nepřítel státu. Náměstek prokurátora Villefort ho v obavě před vlastní diskreditací nechá bez soudu uvěznit v pevnosti If na doživotí. Nešťastný mladík málem zešílí žalem; život mu zachrání vězeň z vedlejšíkobky, abbé Faria, který mu věnuje přátelství, naději a nakonec i mapu k závratnému pokladu. Po dramatickém útěku z vězení Dantès zosnuje pomstu na těch, kteří se na něm provinili, a přijme identitu tajemného a úžasně bo-hatého hraběte Monte Cristo.
