The Count of Monte Cristo

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liberty had now not liberty enough, and panted for wealth. The cause was
not in Dantes, but in providence, who, while limiting the power of man,
has filled him with boundless desires.

Meanwhile, by a cleft between two walls of rock, following a path worn
by a torrent, and which, in all human probability, human foot had never
before trod, Dantes approached the spot where he supposed the grottos
must have existed. Keeping along the shore, and examining the smallest
object with serious attention, he thought he could trace, on certain
rocks, marks made by the hand of man.

Time, which encrusts all physical substances with its mossy mantle, as
it invests all things of the mind with forgetfulness, seemed to have
respected these signs, which apparently had been made with some degree
of regularity, and probably with a definite purpose. Occasionally the
marks were hidden under tufts of myrtle, which spread into large bushes
laden with blossoms, or beneath parasitical lichen. So Edmond had