"As for you, Morrel, this is the whole secret of my behaviour towards you: there is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world, there is merely the comparison between one state and another, nothing more. Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity. Maximilian, you must needs have wished to die, to know how good it is to live." (117.149)
The Count tricks Morrel into thinking his lover is dead in order to teach him a lesson. He sinks him into the depths of depression in order that he might raise him up. Maximilian is the puppet, and Monte Cristo his master. Not in the end, though. In the end, Max is his pupil, and Monte Cristo shows that his methods, however harsh, are effective.