nged: the
boy was invited to Laughton on a visit, and was so lively, yet so well
mannered, that he became a favourite, and was now fairly quartered
in the house with his reputed father; and not to make an unnecessary
mystery of this connection, such was in truth the relationship between
Olivier Dalibard and Honore Gabriel Varney,--a name significant of the
double and illegitimate origin: a French father, an English mother.
Dropping, however, the purely French appellation of Honore, he went
familiarly by that of Gabriel. Half-way down the steps stood the lad,
pencil and tablet in hand, sketching. Let us look over his shoulder: it
is his father's likeness,--a countenance in itself not very remarkable
at the first glance, for the features were small; but when examined,
it was one that most persons, women especially, would have pronounced
handsome, and to which none could deny the higher praise of thought
and intellect. A native of Provence, with some Italian blood in his
veins,--for his grandfather, a merchant of Marseilles, had married into
a Florentine family settled at Leghorn,--the dark complexion common
with those in the South had been subdued, probably by the habits of the
student, into a bronze and steadfast paleness which seemed almost fair
by the contrast of the dark hair which he wore unpowdered, and the
still darker brows which hung thick and prominent over clear gray eyes.
Compared with the features, the skull was disproportionally large, both
behind and before; and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more
favourable to the power than the tenderness of the Provencal's character
from the compact closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness
of the iron jaw. But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and
gave to the expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least,
apparent in the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel himself, as he
stood, would have been a more tempting study to many an artist. It is
true that he was small for his years; but his frame had a vigour in
its light proportions which came from a premature and almost adolescent
symmetry of shape and muscular development. The countenance, however,
had much of effeminate beauty: the long hair reached the shoulders, but
did not curl,--straight, fine, and glossy as a girl's, and in colour
of the pale auburn, tinged with red, which rarely alters in hue as
childhood matures to man; the complexion was dazzlingly clear and fair.