“Hush! hush!” murmured the dying man, “that they may not separate us if you save me!”
“You are right. Oh, yes, yes; be assured I shall save you! Besides, although you suffer much, you do not seem to be in such agony as you were before.”
“Do not mistake! I suffer less because there is in me less strength to endure. At your age we have faith in life; it is the privilege of youth to believe and hope, but old men see death more clearly. Oh, ’tis here—’tis here—’tis over—my sight is gone—my senses fail! Your hand, Dantès! Adieu! adieu!”
And raising himself by a final effort, in which he summoned all his faculties, he said—“Monte Cristo, forget not Monte Cristo!” And he fell back on the bed.
The crisis was terrible, and a rigid form with twisted limbs, swollen eyelids, and lips flecked with bloody foam, lay on the bed of torture, in place of the intellectual being who so lately rested