In this episode, I stay with one chapter of The Count of Monte Cristo: “The Little Cabinet in the Tuileries.” On the surface, it looks like a short political transition chapter, but I argue that it is doing much more than setting up Villefort’s entrance. Dumas uses this scene to show what an insecure state looks like from the inside. We see Louis XVIII, Blacas, the Minister of Police, and Villefort all trying to make sense of a political crisis just as Napoleon is about to return from Elba.