ss, was squeezed in between the nose and a
short chin, which projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was
long rather than oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every
human face a likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in
that of Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse's
head. The skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire
were incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space,
as if to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though
the flames that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.

The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of
an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose
fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the
inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed
to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible
reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous
fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this man;
it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his mind
expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with the
anomalous peculiarities of his person.

His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned
and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the
master alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth
trousers were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his
cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at the seams,--completing an array
of signs, great and small, which in any other man would have betokened
a poverty begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the
negligence of genius.

Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices
than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits
accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the
social world fears to square accounts with the man of learning in his
lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligat