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"Certainly; your name is popular, and does honor to the title they have adorned it with; but you are too intelligent not to know that according to a prejudice, too firmly rooted to be exterminated, a nobility which dates back five centuries is worth more than one that can only reckon twenty years"

"And for this very reason," said Danglars with a smile, which he tried to make sardonic, "I prefer M Andrea Cavalcanti to M Albert de Morcerf"

"Still, I should not think the Morcerfs would yield to the Cavalcanti?"

"The Morcerfs!--Stay, lars; "you are a man of the world, are you not?"

"I think so"

"And you understand heraldry?"

"A little"

"Well, look at my coat-of-arms, it is worth h I alars"

"Well, what then?"

"While his name is not Morcerf"

"How?--not Morcerf?"

"Not the least in the world"

"Go on"

"I have been made a baron, so that I actually am one; he made himself a count, so that he is not one at all"

"Impossible!"

"Listen my dear count; M de Morcerf has beenthe last thirty years You know I have in"

"A proof of great hureat pride," said Monte Cristo

"Well, when I was a clerk, Morcerf was a mere fisherman"