Yes, Monsieur. I am one of those exceptional beings and I believe that, before today, no man has found himself in a position similar to my own. The kingdoms of kings are confined, either by mountains or rivers, or by a change in customs or by a difference of language; but my kingdom is as great as the world, because I am neither Italian, nor French, nor Hindu, nor American, nor a Spaniard; I am a cosmopolitan. No country can claim to be my birthplace. God alone knows in what region I shall die.

I adopt every custom, I speak every tongue. You think I am French, is that not so? Because I speak French as fluently and as perfectly as you do. Well, now. Ali, my Nubian, thinks me an Arab. Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman. Haydée, my slave, believes I am Greek. In this way, you see, being of no country, asking for the protection of no government and acknowledging no man as my brother, I am not restrained or hampered by a single one of the scruples that tie the hands of the powerful or the obstacles that block the path of the weak. I have only two enemies: I shall not say two conquerors, because with persistence I can make them bow to my will: they are distance and time. The third and most awful is my condition as a mortal man. Only that can halt me on the path I have chosen before I have reached my appointed goal. Everything else is planned for. I have foreseen all those things that men call the vagaries of fate: ruin, change and chance. If some of them might injure me, none could defeat me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am. This is why I am telling you things that you have never heard, even from the mouths of kings, because kings need you and other men fear you.

This is what I imagine what Edmond Dantes would look like, if there was any justice in this world.