large, and in their
steel-blue irises, lurking under deep-arched and projecting brows, was
a penetrating quality which veiled the mind within. The nose was
straight and shapely, the mouth large, the lips full and sensuous,
although the powerful projecting chin diminished somewhat the true
effect of the lower one. His complexion was sallow. The frame of his
body was in general small and fine, particularly his hands and feet;
but his deep chest and short neck were huge. This lack of proportion
did not, however, interfere with his gait, which was firm and steady.
The student of character would have declared the stripling to be
self-reliant and secretive; ambitious and calculating; masterful, but
kindly. In an age when phrenology was a mania, its masters found in
his cranium the organs of what they called imagination and causality,
of individuality, comparison, and locality--by which jargon they meant
to say that he had a strong power of imaging and of inductive
reasoning, a knowledge of men, of places, and of things.

The life of the young officer had thus far been so commonplace as to
awaken little expectation for his future. Poor as he was, and careful
of his slim resources, he had, like the men of his class, indulged his
passions to a certain degree; but he had not been riotous in his
living, and he had so far not a debt in the world. What his education
and reading were makes clear that he could have known nothing with a
scholar's comprehensive thoroughness except the essentials of his
profession. But he could master details as no man before or since; he
had a vast fund of information, and a historic outline drawn in fair
proportion and powerful strokes. His philosophy was meager, but he
knew the principles of Rousseau and Raynal thoroughly. His conception
of politics and men was not scientific, but it was clear and
practical. The trade of arms had not been to his taste. He heartily
disliked routine, and despised the petty duties of his rank. His
profession, however, was a means to an end; of any mastery of strategy
or tactics or even interest in them he had as yet given no sign, but
he was absorbed in contemplating and analyzing the exploits of the
great world-conquerors. In particular his mind was dazzled by the
splendors of the Orient as the only field on which an Alexander could
have displayed himself, and he knew what but a few great minds have
grasped, that the interchange of relations between the East and the
W