Gérard de Villefort was a French lawyer who served as chief magistrate of Marseille from 1814 to 1815 and as procureur du roi (chief prosecutor) from 1815 to 1831.
Biography[]
Gérard de Villefort was born in Marseille, France, the son of Monsieur Clarion, a colonel in Napoleon's army during the Napoleonic Wars. Villefort changed his name to distance himself from his father, whose Bonapartist sympathies stood in opposition to Villefort's Legitimist sympathies. Villefort married Valentina and became a lawyer, and he was appointed chief magistrate of Marseille on the restoration of King Louis XVIII in 1814. In 1815, the ambitious sailors Fernand Mondego and Philippe Danglars informed Villefort that their crewmate Edmond Dantès had smuggled a letter from Napoleon I on Elba to Marseille, leading to Villefort sending the gendarmes to arrest Dantès. Dantès proved cooperative during his interrogation, revealing that Napoleon had lied to him by falsely claiming that the letter was of a personal nature. Villefort was inclined to release Dantès until he discovered that the letter was intended for his father, Monsieur Clarion, upon which Villefort burned the letter and had Dantès arrested for high treason and sent off to the Chateau d'If prison island. As Napoleon returned to power and faced off against a powerful British, Austrian, and Prussian coalition during his "Hundred Days", Villefort enlisted the help of Mondego in murdering his father Clarion to cover up his Bonapartist ties once Louis XVIII came back into power for a second time; in exchange, Villefort told Dantès' girlfriend Mercédès Iguanada that Dantès had died in prison and advised her to find comfort with Mondego.
That achieved, Villefort was promoted to chief prosecutor by an oblivious King Louis XVIII, and Villefort moved to Paris. In 1831, he made the acquaintance of a mysterious "Count of Monte Cristo", a spectacularly wealthy aristocrat, and agreed to do special favors for the count in exchange for bribes. When Mondego proposed that Villefort steal one of Monte Cristo's gold shipments from Marseille with the help of Danglars, Villefort instead ambushed Danglars with gendarmes and arrested him. Monte Cristo visited Villefort in a Marseille sauna shortly afterward, thanking him for his help before confronting him over his false statement of Dantès' death years earlier, as well as his murder of his own father. As gendarmes listened in on the conversation from behind closed doors, Villefort said that the Count could not prove any of what he had said, and that Mondego would never testify to it. However, the Count revealed that Villefort had already testified, and gendarmes entered the sauna to arrest Villefort. The Count then revealed himself as Edmond Dantès, and Dantès had Villefort carted off to the Chateau d'If in the same prison wagon he had once ridden in. A gendarme supplied Villefort with a pistol, saying that it was a courtesy for a gentleman, but Villefort found the gun to be empty when he attempted to shoot himself. Dantès then leaned over to the window and taunted Villefort about his hard fate before Villefort was hauled off to prison.
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