acme of life and bustle, a stranger of very
distinguished figure was seen on the sidewalk. His port as well as his
garments betokened nothing short of nobility. He wore a richly
embroidered plum-colored coat, a waistcoat of costly velvet
magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet
breeches and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His head
was covered with a peruke so daintily powdered and adjusted that it
would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat, which, therefore
(and it was a gold-laced hat set off with a snowy feather), he carried
beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star. He managed
his gold-headed cane with an airy grace peculiar to the fine gentlemen
of the period and, to give the highest possible finish to his
equipment, he had lace ruffles at his wrist of a most ethereal
delicacy, sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic must be the
hands which they half-concealed.

It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
personage that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of pipe with
an exquisitely painted bow and an amber mouthpiece. This he applied to
his lips as often as every five or six paces and inhaled a deep whiff
of smoke, which after being retained a moment in his lungs might be
seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils.

As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to find out the
stranger's name.

"It is some great nobleman, beyond question," said one of the
townspeople. "Do you see the star at his breast?"

"Nay, it is too bright to be seen," said another. "Yes, he must needs
be a nobleman, as you say. But by what conveyance, think you, can his
Lordship have voyaged or traveled hither? There has been no vessel from
the old country for a month past; and if he have arrived overland from
the southward, pray where are his attendants and equipage?"

"He needs no equipage to set off his rank," remarked a third. "If he
came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in his
elbow. I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman
blood[191-1] in his veins, I warrant him."

"I rather take him to be a Dutchman or one of your High Germans," said
another citizen. "The men of those countries have always the pipe at
their mouths."

"And so has a Turk," answered his companion. "But in my judgment, this
stranger hath been bred at the French court and hath there learned
politeness and g