Page:The Castle of Wolfenbach - Parsons - 1854.djvu/208

 would follow the letter. In three days my strength mended greatly, yet I was obliged to take very easy journies, and by the time I arrived in England fatigue had quite exhausted me. His excellency sent off an express to you. I now thank heaven that both you and Joseph are alive, and adore the ways of Providence, who extracts good out of evil, and made the very crimes I intended to perpetrate the means of deliverance to you both. The death of the unfortunate Chevalier I bitterly repent, and can only observe here, that when a man gives himself up to unrestrained passions of what nature soever, one vicious indulgence leads to another, crimes succeed each other, and to veil one, and avoid discoveries, we are drawn insensibly to the commission of such detestable actions as once we most abhorred the idea of: for, although my temper was not good, and my passions always violent, had not love and jealousy urged me to desperation, and deprived me of reason, my soul would have shrunk at the thoughts of murders, which grew at last necessary for the preservation."

Here the Count stopped, exhausted and fatigued, indeed he had made several pauses in his relation, from weakness, and it was very visible he had not many days to live.

The Countess could not restrain her tears. "Ah! (said she) I have been the unhappy cause of all—" "Do not reproach yourself, (cried he, hastily;) I am now convinced of your innocence; indeed I long believed it, even when I designed your death the second time: only innocence could have supported you to bear my cruelties, and your horrid confinement with resignation: I knew too well the terrors of guilt; for let not the unhappy wretch, who forgets his duties towards God and man, who gives himself up to the indulgence of his passions, and wrongs the innocent, think, if he escapes detection, he can be happy: alas! remorse and sorrow will one day assail him;