The Count of Monte Cristo

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thunderstruck, fell upon his knees; the child dropped from his arms, and
rolled on the floor by the side of its mother. He picked up the paper,
and, recognizing his wife's writing, ran his eyes rapidly over its
contents; it ran as follows:--

"You know that I was a good mother, since it was for my son's sake I
became criminal. A good mother cannot depart without her son."

Villefort could not believe his eyes,--he could not believe his reason;
he dragged himself towards the child's body, and examined it as a
lioness contemplates its dead cub. Then a piercing cry escaped from his
breast, and he cried, "Still the hand of God." The presence of the
two victims alarmed him; he could not bear solitude shared only by two
corpses. Until then he had been sustained by rage, by his strength of
mind, by despair, by the supreme agony which led the Titans to scale the
heavens, and Ajax to defy the gods. He now arose, his head bowed beneath
the weight of grief, and, shaking his damp, dishevelled hair, he who had