ambition

The man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent victim immolated on the altar of his father’s faults, appeared to him pale and threatening, leading his affianced bride by the hand, and bringing with him remorse, not such as the ancients figured, furious and terrible, but that slow and consuming agony whose pangs are intensified from hour to hour up to the very moment of death.

I told you Villefort was ambitious, and to attain this ambition Villefort would sacrifice everything, even his father.”

de Villefort insignificant, or else dictated by venal ambition.” These words were an allusion to the sentiments which the minister of police had uttered with so much confidence an hour before.

“Sire, the kindness your majesty deigns to evince towards me is a recompense which so far surpasses my utmost ambition that I have nothing more to ask for.”