Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 2).djvu/74

twelve years he had resided in that solitary mansion; but his search was attended with no gratification to his curiosity, farther than the discovery of near three hundred crowns in a private drawer, and the deeds and papers belonging to the estate Count Zimchaw had bequeathed to him, which appeared very extraordinary, and unlikely to be found there: The more he reflected on the memoir, and conduct of the Baron, the greater was his astonishment that any mind could indulge the horrid passion of revenge to such a degree, as to render him indifferent to every pleasure and convenience in life, to undergo the most painful of all situations, an outcast from society, dead to the world, to family, fortune, and friends, solely to inflict punishments upon others, which from habit must, he thought, have long since ceased to afford the smallest degree of gratification to his vindictive and cruel disposition. His sudden death, under such a frame of mind, made Ferdinand shudder, and was, he thought, a