ife and bustle, a stranger of very
distinguished figure was seen on the side-walk. His port, as well as his
garments, betokened nothing short of nobility. He wore a
richly-embroidered plum-colored coat, a waistcoat of costly velvet,
magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet
breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His head
was covered with a peruque, so daintily powdered and adjusted that it
would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which, therefore
(and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather), he carried
beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star. He managed
his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the fine gentleman
of the period; and to give the highest possible finish to his equipment,
he had lace ruffles at his wrist, of a most ethereal delicacy,
sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic must be the hands which
they half concealed.

It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
personage, that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a pipe,
with an exquisitely painted bowl, and an amber mouthpiece. This he
applied to his lips, as often as every five or six paces, and inhaled a
deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a moment in his lungs,
might be seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils.

As may well be supposed, the street was all a-stir to find out the
stranger's name.

"It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said one of the town's
people. "Do you see the star at his breast?"

"Nay; it is too bright to be seen," said another. "Yes; he must needs be
a nobleman, as you say. But, by what conveyance, think you, can his
lordship have voyaged or travelled hither? There has been no vessel from
the old country for a month past; and if he have arrived overland from
the southward, pray where are his attendants and equipage?"

"He needs no equipage to set off his rank," remarked a third. "If he
came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in his elbow.
I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman blood in his
veins, I warrant him."

"I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your high Germans," said
another citizen. "The men of those countries have always the pipe at
their mouths."

"And so has a Turk," answered his companion. "But, in my judgment, this
stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned
poli