Alone! he was alone again! again condemned to silence⁠—again face to face with nothingness! Alone!⁠—never again to see the face, never again to hear the voice of the only human being who united him to earth! Was not Faria’s fate the better, after all⁠—to solve the problem of life at its source, even at the risk of horrible suffering?

The idea of suicide, which his friend had driven away and kept away by his cheerful presence, now hovered like a phantom over the abbé’s dead body.

“If I could die,” he said, “I should go where he goes, and should assuredly find him again. But how to die? It is very easy,” he went on with a smile; “I will remain here, rush on the first person that opens the door, strangle him, and then they will guillotine me.”

But excessive grief is like a storm at sea, where the frail bark is tossed from the depths to the top of the wave. Dantès recoiled from the idea of so infamous a death, and passed suddenly from despair to an ardent desire for life and liberty.