houlders were broad, and his neck short,--a characteristic of
those whose hearts are near their heads; his hair was black, thick, and
fine; his eyes, of a yellow brown, had, as it were, a solar brilliancy,
which proclaimed with what avidity his nature aspired to Light. Though
these strong and virile features were defective through the absence
of an inward peace,--granted only to a life without storms or
conflicts,--they plainly showed the inexhaustible resources of impetuous
senses and the appetites of instinct; just as every motion revealed
the perfection of the man's physical apparatus, the flexibility of
his senses, and their fidelity when brought into play. This man might
contend with savages, and hear, as they do, the tread of enemies in
distant forests; he could follow a scent in the air, a trail on the
ground, or see on the horizon the signal of a friend. His sleep was
light, like that of all creatures who will not allow themselves to be
surprised. His body came quickly into harmony with the climate of any
country where his tempestuous life conducted him. Art and science would
have admired his organization in the light of a human model. Everything
about him was symmetrical and well-balanced,--action and heart,
intelligence and will. At first sight he might be classed among purely
instinctive beings, who give themselves blindly up to the material wants
of life; but in the very morning of his days he had flung himself into
a higher social world, with which his feelings harmonized; study had
widened his mind, reflection had sharpened his power of thought, and the
sciences had enlarged his understanding. He had studied human laws,--the
working of self-interests brought into conflict by the passions, and he
seemed to have early familiarized himself with the abstractions on which
societies rest. He had pored over books,--those deeds of dead humanity;
he had spent whole nights of pleasure in every European capital; he had
slept on fields of battle the night before the combat and the night that
followed victory. His stormy youth may have flung him on the deck of
some corsair and sent him among the contrasting regions of the globe;
thus it was that he knew the actions of a living humanity. He knew the
present and the past,--a double history; that of to-day, that of other
days. Many men have been, like Wilfrid, equally powerful by the Hand, by
the Heart, by the Head; like him, the majority have abused their triple
power. But