d and white, through which every flitting emotion is instantaneously
legible. His hazel eyes sparkled with intelligence; locks of glossy
chestnut curled round his fair and open forehead; and there was about
his lips and smile a winning grace, which, at maturer age, would have
been thought too feminine. Although not regularly handsome, there was in
his form and features that harmonious configuration which is termed
beauty of character, and which, when accompanied by the correspondent
moral graces of gentleness and refinement, often lays a more enduring
hold of the affections than beauty of a more dignified and masculine
order. An habitual and blushing timidity of address, of which he was
painfully conscious, made him shrink from a free and general intercourse
with his fellow-pupils. He had few friends, because his bashful habits
had made him fastidious and reserved; but his gentle and unassuming
deportment, and the invariable sweetness of his temper, endeared him to
the few who had penetration enough to discern his real merits; and so
far recommended him to all, that the existence of an enemy was
impossible.

Thus widely opposite in physical and moral attributes were Florian and
Bartholdy; and yet so cordial appeared their attachment, so incessant
was their intercourse, that the presiding Jesuits could only solve this
psychological enigma by conjecturing that Bartholdy, whose fierce temper
and great bodily strength made him detested and shunned by every other
boy, had found in the gentle sympathies of the unspoiled and credulous
Florian a relief which long habit had made essential to him. It is
probable, too, that the often guilty, and ever equivocal Bartholdy, had
found a protecting influence in the warm adherence of one whose purity
of mind and character were universally acknowledged. His specious
reasoning rarely failed to convince the confiding Florian that he was
unjustly accused, and on several occasions he was screened from
well-merited punishment by the favourable testimony of a friend whose
veracity was above all suspicion.

Florian, on the other hand, was flattered by the consciousness of his
power to protect one so much feared by all but himself, and whom he
thought unjustly persecuted. He was bound to him also by the tie of
gratitude, for the protection which he derived from the size and
strength of Bartholdy when insulted or aggrieved in the quarrels which
so often occur in large seminaries. Gradually, howe