its nobility, but because of its oddity.
He had a prodigious length of face, the nose long in proportion, but not
prominent. The eyes were dark, very bright, and wide apart, with little
eyebrows dabbed over them at a slanting angle. The thin-lipped mouth
rather pursed up, which made his smile the contradiction it was. In
short, my dears, while I do not lay claim to the reading of character,
it required no great astuteness to perceive the scholar, the man of the
world, and the ascetic--and all affected. His conversation bore out the
summary. It astonished us. It encircled the earth, embraced history and
letters since the world began. And added to all this, he had a thousand
anecdotes on his tongue's tip. His words he chose with too great a
nicety; his sentences were of a foreign formation, twisted around; and
his stories were illustrated with French gesticulations. He threw in
quotations galore, in Latin, and French, and English, until the captain
began casting me odd, uncomfortable looks, as though he wished himself
well out of the entertainment. Indeed, poor John Paul's perturbation
amused me more than the gentleman's anecdotes. To be ill at ease is
discouraging to any one, but it was peculiarly fatal with the captain.
This arch-aristocrat dazzled him. When he attempted to follow in the
same vein he would get lost. And his really considerable learning
counted for nothing. He reached the height of his mortification when the
slim gentleman dropped his eyelids and began to yawn. I was wickedly
delighted. He could not have been better met. Another such encounter,
and I would warrant the captain's illusions concerning the gentry to go
up in smoke. Then he might come to some notion of his own true powers.
As for me, I enjoyed the supper which our host had insisted upon our
partaking, drank his wine, and paid him very little attention.

"May I make so bold as to ask, sir, whether you are a patron of
literature?" said the captain, at length.

"A very poor patron, my dear man," was the answer. "Merely a humble
worshipper at the shrine. And I might say that I partake of its benefits
as much as a gentleman may. And yet," he added, with a laugh and a
cough, "those silly newspapers and magazines insist on calling me a
literary man."

"And now that you have indulged in a question, and the claret is coming
on," said he, "perhaps you will tell me something of yourself, Mr.
Carvel, and of your friend, Captain Paul. And how you come t