o the little bay of the
villa, and landed.

As boat after boat came alongside the jetty, numbers rushed down to meet
and welcome their friends. All seemed half wild with delight; and the
adventures they had had on the road, the loveliness of the villa, and
the courtesy they had been met with, resounded on every side. All had
friends, eager to talk or to listen,--all but myself. I alone had no
companionship; for in the crowd and confusion I could not find Hanserl,
and to ask after him was but to risk the danger of an impertinence.

I sat myself down on a rustic bench at last, thinking that if I remained
fixed in one spot I might have the best chance to discover him. And now
I could mark the strange company, which, of every age, and almost of
every condition, appeared to be present. If the marked features of the
Hebrew abounded, there were types of the race that I had never
seen before: fair-haired and olive-eyed, with a certain softness of
expression, united with great decision about the mouth and chin. The
red Jew, too, was there: the fierce-eyed, dark-browed, hollow-cheeked
fellow, of piercing acute-ness in expression, and an almost reckless
look of purpose about him. There was greed, craft, determination, at
times even violence, to be read in the faces; but never weakness, never
imbecility; and so striking was this that the Christian physiognomy
seemed actually vulgar when contrasted with those faces so full of
vigorous meaning and concentration.

Nothing could be less like my father's guests than these people. It was
not in dress and demeanor and general carriage that they differed,--in
their gestures as they met, in their briefest greetings,--but the whole
character of their habite, as expressed by their faces, seemed so unlike
that I could not imagine any clew to their several ranks, and how this
one was higher or greater than that. All the nationalities of Eastern
Europe were there,--Hungarian, Styrian, Dalmatian, and Albanian. Traders
all: this one bond of traffic and gain blending into a sort of family
races and creeds the most discordant, and types whose forefathers had
been warring with each other for centuries. Plenty of coarseness there
was, unculture and roughness everywhere; but, strangely enough, little
vulgarity and no weakness, no deficient energy anywhere. They were the
warriors of commerce; and they brought to the battle of trade resolution
and boldness and persistence and daring not a whit inferior