Summary
A bullet-riddled pigeon tumbles into the grasp of Sarcany, a restless opportunist whose pockets are as empty as his conscience; the bird’s paper capsule, once cracked, reveals a cipher that sings of conspiracy against the Austro-Hungarian crown. In the smoky back-rooms of Trieste he colludes with Torenthal, a banker whose ledger ink is indistinguishable from blood, and together they contrive to insinuate Sarcany into the household of the noble Mathias Sandorf—scholar, patriot, doting father—posing as a dutiful secretary while sharpening betrayal like a stiletto. The forged transcript of treason, once presented before a venal tribunal, condemns Sandorf and his two steadfast comrades to a subterranean fortress whose walls drip the residue of earlier executions; the state, ever generous, splits the confiscated estates between the accusers. On the eve of his intended beheading Sandorf slides down a lightning-blasted telegraph cable into the Adriatic night, crawls through maquis thick with cicadas and spies, and vanishes into a Balkan hinterland where only shepherds keep score of time. Two decades of exile transmute the grieving aristocrat into an itinerant physician versed in Persian herbs and Bedouin poetics; an elderly merchant of Isfahan bequeaths him a fortune, a library of occult treatises, and the wind-whipped Isle of Zorda—an Adriatic microcosm where lemon trees outnumber regrets. Returning in spectral silence, Sandorf discovers that Sarcany and Torenthal have raised his kidnapped daughter Mathilde as their pampered heiress, their paternal affection calibrated to the percentage of her dowry; she, however, loves the penniless scion of one of her father’s condemned comrades. Sarcany is lured to the Barbary Coast, chained in a corsair’s hold, and traded like salt; the fisherman who once sold Sandorf’s hiding-place to the gendarmes now squirms beneath the vengeful magnate’s gaze; the banker, stripped by roulette, signs promissory notes with trembling fingers while gulls laugh overhead. In a moonlit dénouement inside the crumbling amphitheatre of Zorda, Sandorf declines the satisfactions of a private execution, instead delivering his tormentors to the same iron law they once weaponized; daughter and beloved reunite while cicadas strike up a requiem for vendetta, and the island—no longer a fortress of solitude—becomes a republic of second chances beneath a sky rinsed clean by sirocco rain.
Synopsis
Sarcany, an adventurer, finds a tried carrier pigeon, gets possession of a code message and joining hands with an unscrupulous banker, Torenthal, secures a position as secretary with Mathias Sandorf. Decoding the message he unearths a plot against the government. Under the law, Torenthal and Sarcany secure half of Sandorf's wealth. Sandorf and his two friends are imprisoned and about to be executed when Sandorf makes his escape by sliding down a cable near the cell window. He hides in a peasant's home. His presence is made known to the police, but by hiding among the rocks all night he finally escapes. Twenty years later he returns, having wandered over the Orient as a healer and been left a fortune, including the Isle of Zorda, by a wealthy man. Sandorf's aim is to seek vengeance on the three who have betrayed him. His daughter, who was kidnapped, has been raised by Torenthal as his own child, and to keep her share of the fortune he seeks to marry her to Sarcany, but she is in love with the son of one of Sandorf's friends, and refuses. Sarcany is kidnapped and taken to Morocco. Sandorf gets the fisherman who betrayed him into his power, and also the banker who has lost his fortune at Monte Carlo. With Sava's sweetheart, who he has restored to health, they rescue Sava and get Sarcany in their power. Sandorf turns them over to the legal authorities, unites his daughter and her sweetheart, and all live happily on the Island of Zorda.
