old face as had ever
looked over a bulwark at a sinking ship, or viewed with indifference the
ravaging of a devoted town. Courage there was, capacity in large
measure, but not one trace of human kindness. Thin, lean, hawk-like,
ruthless, cunning, weather-beaten, it was sadly out of place in its
brave attire in that vaulted chamber. It was the face of a man who ruled
by terror; who commanded by might. It was the face of an adventurer,
too, one never sure of his position, but always ready to fight for it,
and able to fight well. There was a watchful, alert, inquiring look in
the fierce blue eyes, an intent, expectant expression in the craggy
countenance, that told of the uncertainties of his assumptions; yet the
lack of assurance was compensated for by the firm, resolute line of the
mouth under the trifling upturned mustache, with its lips at the same
time thin and sensual. To be fat and sensual is to appear to mitigate
the latter evil with at least a pretence at good humor; to be thin and
sensual is to be a devil. This man was evil, not with the grossness of a
debauchee but with the thinness of the devotee. And he was an old man,
too. Sixty odd years of vicious life, glossed over in the last two
decades by an assumption of respectability, had swept over the gray
hairs, which evoked no reverence.

There was a heavy frown on his face on that summer evening in the year
of our Lord, 1685. The childless wife whom he had taken for his
betterment and her worsening, some ten years since--in succession to
Satan only knew how many nameless, unrecognized precursors--had died a
few moments before, in the chamber above his head. Fairly bought from a
needy father, she had been a cloak to lend him a certain respectability
when he settled down, red with the blood of thousands whom he had slain
and rich with the treasure of cities that he had wasted, to enjoy the
evening of his life. Like all who are used for such purposes, she knew,
after a little space, the man over whom the mantle of her reputation had
been flung. She had rejoiced at the near approach of that death for
which she had been longing almost since her wedding day. That she had
shrunk from him in the very articles of dissolution when he stood by her
bedside, indicated the character of the relationship.

To witness death and to cause it had been the habit of this man. He
marked it in her case, as in others, with absolute indifference--he
cared so little for her that he did