, when they flashed like
glow-worms; his plain suit of black with deep cambric ruffles, his silk
shorts and buckled shoes, had in them something of the ecclesiastic; and
so it was. He was the Abbe van Praet, the cadet of an ancient Belgian
family, a man of considerable ability, highly informed on most subjects;
a linguist, a musician, a painter of no small pretensions, who spent his
life in the _far niente_ of chateau existence--now devising a party of
pleasure, now inventing a madrigal, now giving directions to the chef
how to make an _omelette a la cure_, now stealing noiselessly along some
sheltered walk to hear some fair lady's secret confidence; for he was
privy counsellor in all affairs of the heart, and, if the world did not
wrong him, occasionally pleaded his own cause when no other petitioner
offered. I was soon struck by this man, and by the tact with which,
while he preserved his ascendency over the minds of all, he never
admitted any undue familiarity, yet affected all the ease and
_insouciance_ of the veriest idler. I was flattered, also, by his notice
of me, and by the politeness of his invitation to sit next him at table.

The distinctions I have hinted at already, made the dinner conversation
a strange medley of Flemish history and sporting anecdotes; of
reminiscences of the times of Maria Theresa, and dissertations on
weights and ages; of the genealogies of Flemish families, and the
pedigrees of English racehorses. The young English ladies, both pretty
and delicate-looking girls, with an air of good-breeding and tone in
their manner, shocked me not a little by the intimate knowledge they
displayed on all matters of the turf and the stable--their acquaintance
with the details of hunting, racing, and steeplechasing, seeming to form
the most wonderful attraction to the moustached counts and whiskered
barons who listened to them. The colonel was a fine, mellow-looking old
gentleman, with a white head and a red nose, and with that species of
placid expression one sees in the people who perform those parts in
Vaudeville theatres called _peres nobles_. He seemed, indeed, as if
he had been daily in the habit of bestowing a lovely daughter on some
happy, enraptured lover, and invoking a blessing on their heads; there
was a rich unction in his voice, an almost imperceptible quaver, that
made it seem kind and affectionate; he finished his shake of the hand
with a little parting squeeze, a kind of 'one cheer more,'