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"The scholar watched his brother in amazement. He did not know, he whose heart was as light as air, he who observed no law in the world but the ordinary laws of nature, he who allowed his passions to follow what course they wanted, so that the spring of his emotions was always dry because he opened daily so many fresh channels- he had no idea with what fury that flood of human passions swells and surges when it is refused outlet, how it gathers strength, and over-flows, how it wears away the heart, how it breaks forth in inward sobs and stifled convulsions, until it has broken away its dikes and burst from its bed. The austere, icy exterior of Claude Frollo, that cold surface of unassailable virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The jovial scholar had never thought of the lava, deep, boiling, furious, beneath the snowy brow of Etna." -Victor Hugo
"When Geddie kissed Paula at her door that night he was happier than he had ever been before. 'Here in this hollow lotus land, ever to live and lie reclined' seemed to him, as it has seemed to many mariners, the best as well as the easiest. His future would be an ideal one. He had attained a Paradise without a serpent. His Eve would be indeed a part of him, unbeguiled, and therefore more beguiling. He had made his decision tonight, and his heart was full of serene, assured content.
Geddie went back to his house whistling that finest and saddest love song, 'La Golondrina.' At the door his tame monkey leaped down from his shelf, chattering briskly. The consul turned to his desk to get him some nuts he usually kept there. Reaching in the half-darkness, his hand struck against the bottle. He started as if he had touched the cold rotundity of a serpent.
He had forgotten that the bottle was there.
He lighted the lamp and fed the monkey. Then, very deliberately, he lighted a cigar, and took the bottle in his hand, and walked down the path to the beach.
There was a moon, and the sea was glorious. The breeze had shifted, as it did each evening, and was now rushing steadily seaward.
Stepping to the water's edge, Geddie hurled the unopened bottle far out into the sea. It disappeared for a moment, and then shot upward twice its length. Geddie stood still, watching it. The moonlight was so bright that he could see it bobbing up and down with the little waves. Slowly it receded from the shore, flashing and turning as it went. The wind was carrying it out to sea. Soon it became a mere speck, doubtfully discerned at irregular intervals; and then the mystery of it was swallowed up by the greater mystery of the ocean." -O'Henry, from "The Lotus and the Bottle"