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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: on the table he sat between the two empty bottles, while
spectres danced in the light of the unsnuffed candle --
spectres such as Hoffmann strews over his punch-drenched
pages, like black, fantastic dust.
Danglars alone was content and joyous -- he had got rid of
an enemy and made his own situation on the Pharaon secure.
Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the
ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with
him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man was
to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by
taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own
 The Count of Monte Cristo |