Mercedes becoming a hermit and Albert joining the African army were entirely self-inflicted punishments. He actually intended for Albert and Mercedes to live in peace and relative comfort after he was done with Fernand.
The count specifically tells her that she should not have given up all the wealth that Fernand had amassed, because part of it was hers by right. Even if she would have him, that's a life Edmond would never be able to go back to. I don't think it was intended to be a "punishment." If anything, it's a testament to her character, in that she's easily able to give up all the things Fernand provided for her upon learning of his crimes against Edmond and settle down for the life she was "meant" to have in Marseille. But to Mercedes, he was always a friend, and she knew that he loved her, she even loved him back in her own way - just not nearly as much as she had loved Dantes. He was Dantes' enemy, to the point where they only shake hands because Mercedes tells them to. I don't think Fernand Mondego was her enemy. If she had waited a decent interval, say a year, and married someone for comfort and security and maybe a little love, I think things would have changed a lot - but she married her enemy and was too naive to think any deeper into it. I don't neecessarily say she deserved to be alone, but arguably Dantes might have been less harsh on her if she hadn't married Fernand Mondego of all people. YMMV seriously on whether Mercedes deserved it or not. I know the book is of its time, but the other female characters seem to end up with fates that align with their actions. Mercedes is the only person of her generation not to have intentionally harmed anyone, and yet she winds up broken and alone, while Dantes sails off into the blue horizon with a hot young thing. 
In what is essentially a decades-long morality play, it's always bothered me that the most moral character in the book winds up paying for crimes she never committed.Presumably, his servants take care to be certain he doesn't choke (such as feeding him a diet of liquified food and punching him in the chest every time something goes down the wrong pipe). Noirtier eats and defecates because if he couldn't, either he would have died of heart failure long ago or nothing with a body too large to absorb sufficient air through osmosis would have ever come into being, or failing that, consistently died a much more disgusting death shortly after every single birth. A lot of systems (like the heart, diaphragm, throat, and bowels) work independently from the brain, and it typically requires training one's mind explicitly to overcome these systems in order to have any semblance of control over them.
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