The Count of Monte Cristo

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walls of his prison, wreaked his anger upon everything, and chiefly upon
himself, so that the least thing,--a grain of sand, a straw, or a breath
of air that annoyed him, led to paroxysms of fury. Then the letter that
Villefort had showed to him recurred to his mind, and every line gleamed
forth in fiery letters on the wall like the mene tekel upharsin of
Belshazzar. He told himself that it was the enmity of man, and not the
vengeance of heaven, that had thus plunged him into the deepest misery.
He consigned his unknown persecutors to the most horrible tortures he
could imagine, and found them all insufficient, because after torture
came death, and after death, if not repose, at least the boon of
unconsciousness.

By dint of constantly dwelling on the idea that tranquillity was death,
and if punishment were the end in view other tortures than death must be
invented, he began to reflect on suicide. Unhappy he, who, on the brink
of misfortune, broods over ideas like these!