Excerpt from The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories; French Novels Terrible, however, as he sometimes was to those who surrounded him, Count Kostia was yet a Civilized devil. So, after a stay of three years under tropical skies, he began to sigh for old Europe, and one fine day saw him disembark upon the quays of Lisbon. He crossed Portugal, Spain, the south of France and Switzerland. At Basle, he learned that on the borders of the Rhine, between Coblenz and Bonn, in a situation quite isolated, an old castle was for sale. To this place he hurried and bought the antique walls and the lands which belonged to them, without discussing the price and without making a detailed examination of the property. T he bargain concluded, he made some hasty and indis pensable repairs on one of the buildings which composed a part of his dilapidated manor, and which claimed the im posing name of the fortress of Geierfels, and at once installed himself therein, hoping to pass the rest of his life in peace able and studious seclusion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.