He Used the Italian Tounge, and Used It With Perfect Ease; But This Would Not Have Convinced You He Was Italian

He was a man of forty, with a high but well shaped head, on which hair, still dense, but prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a fine, narrow, extremely modeled and composed face, of which the only fault was just this effect of it running a trifle too much to points; an appearance to which the shape of the beard contributed little. This beard, cut in the manner of the portraits of the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair moustache, of which the ends had a romantic upward flourish, gave its wearer a foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a gentleman who studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes at once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard, expressive and of the observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you that he studied it only within well chosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to determine his original clime and country, he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the answer to this question an insipidly easy one. If he had English blood in his veins it had probably received some French or Italian commixture; but he suggested, fine gold coin as he was, no stamp or emblem of the common mintage that provides for general circulation; he was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a special occasion. He had a light, lean, rather languid-looking figure, and was apparently neither tall nor short. He was dressed as a man dresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have no vulgar things.