The Count of Monte Cristo

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"At the sight of papers of all sorts,--titles, contracts, parchments,
which were kept in the archives of the family, all descending from
the poisoned cardinal, I in my turn examined the immense bundles of
documents, like twenty servitors, stewards, secretaries before me; but
in spite of the most exhaustive researches, I found--nothing. Yet I had
read, I had even written a precise history of the Borgia family, for
the sole purpose of assuring myself whether any increase of fortune had
occurred to them on the death of the Cardinal Caesar Spada; but could
only trace the acquisition of the property of the Cardinal Rospigliosi,
his companion in misfortune.

"I was then almost assured that the inheritance had neither profited the
Borgias nor the family, but had remained unpossessed like the treasures
of the Arabian Nights, which slept in the bosom of the earth under the
eyes of the genie. I searched, ransacked, counted, calculated a thousand
and a thousand times the income and expenditure of the family for three
hundred years. It was useless. I remained in my ignorance, and the