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their inception in M---y's peculiarities,--peculiarities which
originated from an entire and absolute independence of thought and
manner and conduct. A grown-up man in intellect, experience, and
sagacity,--a child in simplicity and feeling, and in the effect produced
by the forms and ceremonies and conventionalities of life: these seemed
always to astonish him, and he never, as he said, could understand why
people should live with masks over their faces, when they would breathe
so much freer and be so much more at their ease by taking them off. This
was the man who invited me to come to his house,--and who would not have
given the invitation, had he not wanted me to accept it.

I have spoken of three paintings which excited my attention the day I
paid my first visit. These were masterpieces,--three portraits, not
life-like, but life itself. They did not attract by the perpetual
stare of the eyes following one, whichever way one turned, as in many
pictures; in these the eyes were not thrown on the spectator. One
portrait was that of a man of at least fifty: an intellectual head;
eyes, I know not what they were,--fierce, defiant, hardly human, but
earthly, devilish; a mouth repulsive to behold, in its eager, absorbing,
selfish expression. Another,--the same person evidently: the same clear
breadth and development of brain, but a subdued and almost heavenly
expression of the eyes, while the mouth was quite a secondary feature,
scarcely disagreeable. The third was the likeness of a young girl,
beautiful, even to perfection. What character, what firmness, what power
to love could be read in those features! What hate, what revulsion, what
undying energy for the true and the right were there! A fair, young
creation,--so fair and so young, it seemed impossible that her destiny
should be an unhappy one: yet her destiny was unhappy. The shadow on the
brow, the melancholy which softened the clear hazel eye, the slightest
possible compression of the mouth, said,--"_Destined to misfortune!_"
Were these actual portraits of living persons, or at least of persons
who had lived? Was there any connection between the man with two faces
and two lives and the maiden with an unhappy destiny? After I became
better acquainted with M---y, I asked him the question, and in reply he
told me the following story, which I now give as nearly as possible in
his own words.

* * * * *

Many years ago, in one of my excu