he little ivory frame, feeding
on the contrast. This man's face was the born orator's, with the
light-giving eyes, the forward nose, the animated mouth, all stamped for
speechfulness and enterprise, of Cicero's rival in the forum before he
took the headship of armies and marched to empire.

The gifts of speech, enterprise, decision, were marked on his features
and his bearing, but with a fine air of lordly mildness. Alas, he could
not be other than Christian, so glorious was he in build! One could
vision an eagle swooping to his helm by divine election. So vigorously
rich was his blood that the swift emotion running with the theme as
he talked pictured itself in passing and was like the play of sheet
lightning on the variations of the uninterrupted and many-glancing
outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him sufficed.
Here was an image of the beauty of a new order of godlike men, that
drained an Indian Bacchus of his thin seductions at a breath-reduced
him to the state of nursery plaything, spangles and wax, in the
contemplation of a girl suddenly plunged on the deeps of her womanhood.
She shrank to smaller and smaller as she looked.

Be sure that she knew who he was. No, says she. But she knew. It
terrified her soul to think he was Alvan. She feared scarcely less that
it might not be he. Between these dreads of doubt and belief she played
at cat and mouse with herself, escaped from cat, persecuted mouse,
teased herself, and gloated. It is he! not he! he! not he! most
certainly! impossible!--And then it ran: If he, oh me! If another, woe
me! For she had come to see Alvan. Alvan and she shared ideas. They
talked marvellously alike, so as to startle Count Kollin: and supposing
he was not Alvan, it would be a bitter disappointment. The supposition
that he was, threatened her with instant and life-long bondage.

Then again, could that face be the face of a Jew? She feasted. It was a
noble profile, an ivory skin, most lustrous eyes. Perchance a Jew of the
Spanish branch of the exodus, not the Polish. There is the noble Jew as
well as the bestial Gentile. There is not in the sublimest of Gentiles a
majesty comparable to that of the Jew elect. He may well think his race
favoured of heaven, though heaven chastise them still. The noble Jew is
grave in age, but in his youth he is the arrow to the bow of his fiery
eastern blood, and in his manhood he is--ay, what you see there! a
figure of easy and superb pre