He was now
without his hat, and the likeness was yet more startling, only I
observed that while he was conversing there was less severity in the
countenance; there was even a smile, though a very quiet and very cold
one. The dignity of mien I had acknowledged in the street was also more
striking; a dignity akin to that which invests some prince of the
East--conveying the idea of supreme indifference and habitual,
indisputable, indolent, but resistless power.

G---- soon after left the stranger, who then took up a scientific
journal, which seemed to absorb his attention.

I drew G---- aside. "Who and what is that gentleman?"

"That? Oh, a very remarkable man indeed. I met him last year amidst the
caves of Petra--the scriptural Edom. He is the best Oriental scholar I
know. We joined company, had an adventure with robbers, in which he
showed a coolness that saved our lives; afterwards he invited me to
spend a day with him in a house he had bought at Damascus--a house
buried amongst almond blossoms and roses--the most beautiful thing! He
had lived there for some years, quite as an Oriental, in grand style. I
half suspect he is a renegade, immensely rich, very odd; by the by, a
great mesmeriser. I have seen him with my own eyes produce an effect on
inanimate things. If you take a letter from your pocket and throw it to
the other end of the room, he will order it to come to his feet, and you
will see the letter wriggle itself along the floor till it has obeyed
his command. 'Pon my honour, 'tis true: I have seen him affect even the
weather, disperse or collect clouds, by means of a glass tube or wand.
But he does not like talking of these matters to strangers. He has only
just arrived in England; says he has not been here for a great many
years; let me introduce him to you."

"Certainly! He is English, then? What is his name?"

"Oh!--a very homely one--Richards."

"And what is his birth--his family?"

"How do I know? What does it signify?--no doubt some parvenu, but
rich--so infernally rich!"

G---- drew me up to the stranger, and the introduction was effected. The
manners of Mr Richards were not those of an adventurous traveller.
Travellers are in general constitutionally gifted with high animal
spirits: they are talkative, eager, imperious. Mr Richards was calm and
subdued in tone, with manners which were made distant by the loftiness
of punctilious courtesy--the manners of a former age. I observed that
the English