a mother entreats the fairy godmother to set on the forehead of an
infant abandoned, like Moses, to the waves. Love lurked in the
thousand fair curls that fell over his shoulders. His throat, truly a
swan's throat, was white and exquisitely round. His blue eyes, bright
and liquid, mirrored the sky. His features and the mould of his brow
were refined and delicate enough to enchant a painter. The bloom of
beauty, which in a woman's face causes men such indescribable delight,
the exquisite purity of outline, the halo of light that bathes the
features we love, were here combined with a masculine complexion, and
with strength as yet but half developed, in the most enchanting
contrast. His was one of those melodious countenances which even when
silent speak and attract us. And yet, on marking it attentively, the
incipient blight might have been detected which comes of a great
thought or a passion, the faint yellow tinge that made him seem like a
young leaf opening to the sun.

No contrast could be greater or more startling than that seen in the
companionship of these two men. It was like seeing a frail and
graceful shrub that has grown from the hollow trunk of some gnarled
willow, withered by age, blasted by lightning, standing decrepit; one
of those majestic trees that painters love; the trembling sapling
takes shelter there from storms. One was a god, the other was an
angel; one the poet that feels, the other the poet that expresses--a
prophet in sorrow, a levite in prayer.

They went out together without speaking.

"Did you mark how he called him to him?" cried the sergeant of the
watch when the footsteps of the couple were no longer audible on the
strand. "Are not they a demon and his familiar?"