# Count Octave de Chagny — The Secret Tomb character guide

> Count Octave de Chagny in The Secret Tomb by Maurice Leblanc.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Count, Octave, Count de Chagny

**First appearance:** 0000-i-the-ch-teau-de-roborey

## Snapshot

A grand seigneur who offers the orphaned Dorothy her rightful place among the Chagnys, then bristles when she refuses to be rescued on his terms.

## Who they are

Count Octave de Chagny presides over the family council that folds Dorothy and Raoul into the old partnership of their murdered fathers, presenting the arrangement as both duty and magnanimous gesture. His eloquence is genuine but a little self-satisfied, and Dorothy's obstinate silence in the face of it quietly exposes how late his concern for his kinsman's daughter has arrived. His vexation when she declines the château life reveals a man more comfortable conferring obligations than receiving refusals, and that friction keeps the Chagny household a place Dorothy must negotiate rather than simply inhabit.

## In the story

### [III: Extra-Lucid](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_tomb_se/chapters/iii-extra-lucid)

Supports the police inquiry and suggests Dorothy be questioned like everyone else.

### [IV: The Cross-Examination](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_tomb_se/chapters/iv-the-cross-examination)

Hosts the examination, reads a letter from Dorothy's father, and suggests that Jean d'Argonne may not have died of his wound.

### [XVII: The Secret Perishes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_tomb_se/chapters/xvii-the-secret-perishes)

Offers to arrange payment for Raoul but is overruled by Dorothy's intervention.

### [XVIII: In Robore Fortuna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_tomb_se/chapters/xviii-in-robore-fortuna)

Present at the gathering, astonished by Dorothy's revelation.

## Links

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- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_tomb_se/characters