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, Dantes! 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 there.
Dantes took the lamp, placed it on a projecting stone above the bed, whence its tremulous light fell with strange and fantastic ray on the distorted countenance and motionless, stiffened body.

With steady gaze he awaited confidently the moment for administering the restorative.
When he believed that the right moment had arrived, he took the knife, pried open the teeth, which offered less resistance than before, counted one after the other twelve drops, and watched; the phial contained, perhaps, twice as much more.

He waited ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, half an hour,--no change took place.