“But why should he wish to enlighten himself upon the subject?” asked Villefort, after a moment’s reflection, “what interest can this M. de Monte Cristo or M. Zaccone⁠—son of a shipowner of Malta, discoverer of a mine in Thessaly, now visiting Paris for the first time⁠—what interest, I say, can he take in discovering a gloomy, mysterious, and useless fact like this? However, among all the incoherent details given to me by the Abbé Busoni and by Lord Wilmore, by that friend and that enemy, one thing appears certain and clear in my opinion⁠—that in no period, in no case, in no circumstance, could there have been any contact between him and me.”