The Count of Monte Cristo

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Before him is a dead sea that stretches in azure calm before the eye;
but he who unwarily ventures within its embrace finds himself struggling
with a monster that would drag him down to perdition. Once thus
ensnared, unless the protecting hand of God snatch him thence, all is
over, and his struggles but tend to hasten his destruction. This state
of mental anguish is, however, less terrible than the sufferings that
precede or the punishment that possibly will follow. There is a sort of
consolation at the contemplation of the yawning abyss, at the bottom of
which lie darkness and obscurity.

Edmond found some solace in these ideas. All his sorrows, all his
sufferings, with their train of gloomy spectres, fled from his cell when
the angel of death seemed about to enter. Dantes reviewed his past
life with composure, and, looking forward with terror to his future
existence, chose that middle line that seemed to afford him a refuge.

"Sometimes," said he, "in my voyages, when I was a man and commanded