Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/224

 Don Bernardos was one of the most singular characters in existence, and peculiarly remarkable for the mixture of the extremes of two opposite temperaments. On the one hand he would be choleric and rash to excess, and on the other, sedate, passive and tranquil in the same manner. All this appeared to be systematical in his conduct. Still I thought the former temper the more congenial to his nature, and the other merely forced into practice by the philosophy of life.

His mind was of the deepest cast of Spanish gravity, and I cannot say, that I ever saw more than a smile on his countenance, even in the most festive moments of social and convivial pleasure. Nothing could disturb the equilibrium of his soul, which having tasted and exhausted all forts of prosperities and adversities, acquired a natural frigidity under every change and vicissitude of life and fortune. Nature, for the first time, had drained herself as it were in this moving phenomenon, and had nothing left to rouse his torpid sensibility. Without a tear would he witness the convulsive struggles of humanity,