The Count of Monte Cristo

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simplicity of thought, and without education; he could not, therefore,
in the solitude of his dungeon, traverse in mental vision the history of
the ages, bring to life the nations that had perished, and rebuild the
ancient cities so vast and stupendous in the light of the imagination,
and that pass before the eye glowing with celestial colors in Martin's
Babylonian pictures. He could not do this, he whose past life was so
short, whose present so melancholy, and his future so doubtful. Nineteen
years of light to reflect upon in eternal darkness! No distraction could
come to his aid; his energetic spirit, that would have exalted in thus
revisiting the past, was imprisoned like an eagle in a cage. He clung to
one idea--that of his happiness, destroyed, without apparent cause,
by an unheard-of fatality; he considered and reconsidered this idea,
devoured it (so to speak), as the implacable Ugolino devours the skull
of Archbishop Roger in the Inferno of Dante.

Rage supplanted religious fervor. Dantes uttered blasphemies that made
his jailer recoil with horror, dashed himself furiously against the