afforded. He might have been fifteen or fifty, and was twenty-one
years and seven months. He was by no means a handsome man -- perhaps
the reverse. The contour of his face was somewhat angular and harsh.
His forehead was lofty and very fair; his nose a snub; his eyes
large, heavy, glassy, and meaningless. About the mouth there was more
to be observed. The lips were gently protruded, and rested the one
upon the other, after such a fashion that it is impossible to
conceive any, even the most complex, combination of human features,
conveying so entirely, and so singly, the idea of unmitigated
gravity, solemnity and repose.

It will be perceived, no doubt, from what I have already said, that
the Baron was one of those human anomalies now and then to be found,
who make the science of mystification the study and the business of
their lives. For this science a peculiar turn of mind gave him
instinctively the cue, while his physical appearance afforded him
unusual facilities for carrying his prospects into effect. I quaintly
termed the domination of the Baron Ritzner von Jung, ever rightly
entered into the mystery which overshadowed his character. I truly
think that no person at the university, with the exception of myself,
ever suspected him to be capable of a joke, verbal or practical: --
the old bull-dog at the garden-gate would sooner have been accused,
-- the ghost of Heraclitus, -- or the wig of the Emeritus Professor
of Theology. This, too, when it was evident that the most egregious
and unpardonable of all conceivable tricks, whimsicalities and
buffooneries were brought about, if not directly by him, at least
plainly through his intermediate agency or connivance. The beauty, if
I may so call it, of his art mystifique, lay in that consummate
ability (resulting from an almost intuitive knowledge of human
nature, and a most wonderful self-possession,) by means of which he