artists. Their saying in
common, 'Plutarch's Pompeius,' may be traceable to a reading of some
professorial article on the common portrait-painting of the sage of
Chaeroneia. The dainty savageness in the 'bite' Plutarch mentions,
evidently struck on a similarity of tastes in both, as it has done with
others. And in regard to Caesar, Clotilde thought much of Caesar; she
had often wished that Caesar (for the additional pleasure in thinking
of him) had been endowed with the beauty of his rival: one or two of
Plutarch's touches upon the earlier history of Pompeius had netted her
fancy, faintly (your generosity must be equal to hearing it) stung her
blood; she liked the man; and if he had not been beaten in the end, she
would have preferred him femininely. His name was not written Pompey to
her, as in English, to sound absurd: it was a note of grandeur befitting
great and lamentable fortunes, which the young lady declined to share
solely because of her attraction to the victor, her compulsion to render
unto the victor the sunflower's homage. She rendered it as a slave: the
splendid man beloved to ecstasy by the flower of Roman women was her
natural choice.

Alvan could not be even a Caesar in person, he was a Jew. Still a Jew
of whom Count Kollin spoke so warmly must be exceptional, and of
the exceptional she dreamed. He might have the head of a Caesar. She
imagined a huge head, the cauldron of a boiling brain, anything but
bright to the eye, like a pot always on the fire, black, greasy,
encrusted, unkempt: the head of a malicious tremendous dwarf. Her
hungry inquiries in a city where Alvan was well known, brought her full
information of one who enjoyed a highly convivial reputation besides the
influence of his political leadership; but no description of his aspect
accompanied it, for where he was nightly to be met somewhere about the
city, none thought of describing him, and she did not push that question
because she had sketched him for herself, and rather wished, the more
she heard of his genius, to keep him repulsive. It appeared that his
bravery was as well proved as his genius, and a brilliant instance of it
had been given in the city not long since. He had her ideas, and he won
multitudes with them: he was a talker, a writer, and an orator; and he
was learned, while she could not pretend either to learning or to a flow
of rhetoric. She could prattle deliciously, at times pointedly, relying
on her intuition to tell her