and
agile in figure. Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman afterwards learned, had
a mortal dread of the robustness overtaking the agility; he was afraid
of growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to afford a belly. He
rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal, and if
you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he started and turned
pale. In your WELL he read a grosser monosyllable. He had a round head,
high above the ears, a crop of hair at once dense and silky, a broad,
low forehead, a short nose, of the ironical and inquiring rather than of
the dogmatic or sensitive cast, and a mustache as delicate as that of
a page in a romance. He resembled his sister not in feature, but in the
expression of his clear, bright eye, completely void of introspection,
and in the way he smiled. The great point in his face was that it was
intensely alive--frankly, ardently, gallantly alive. The look of it
was like a bell, of which the handle might have been in the young man's
soul: at a touch of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound. There
was something in his quick, light brown eye which assured you that he
was not economizing his consciousness. He was not living in a corner of
it to spare the furniture of the rest. He was squarely encamped in the
centre and he was keeping open house. When he smiled, it was like the
movement of a person who in emptying a cup turns it upside down: he gave
you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired Newman with something of
the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his earlier years
for those of his companions who could perform strange and clever
tricks--make their joints crack in queer places or whistle at the back
of their mouths.

"My sister told me," M. de Bellegarde continued, "that I ought to come
and remove the impression that I had taken such great pains to produce
upon you; the impression that I am a lunatic. Did it strike you that I
behaved very oddly the other day?"

"Rather so," said Newman.

"So my sister tells me." And M. de Bellegarde watched his host for a
moment through his smoke-wreaths. "If that is the case, I think we had
better let it stand. I didn't try to make you think I was a lunatic, at
all; on the contrary, I wanted to produce a favorable impression.
But if, after all, I made a fool of myself, it was the intention of
Providence. I should injure myself by protesting too much, for I
should seem to set up a claim for wisdom which, in the