countenance, as we last saw it, if it had lost much of its earlier
beauty, was still incontestably handsome. What with vigour and health
and animal spirits, then on the aspect still lingered light; now from
corruption the light itself was gone. In that herculean constitution
excess of all kinds had at length forced its ravage, and the ravage was
visible in the ruined face. The once sparkling eye was dull and
bloodshot. The colours of the cheek, once clear and vivid, to which
fiery drink had only sent the blood in a warmer glow, were now of a
leaden dulness, relieved but by broken streaks of angry red, like gleams
of flame struggling through gathered smoke. The profile, once sharp and
delicate like Apollo's, was now confused in its swollen outline; a few
years more, and it would be gross as that of Silenus,--the nostrils,
distended with incipient carbuncles, which betray the gnawing fang that
alcohol fastens into the liver. Evil passions had destroyed the outlines
of the once beautiful lips, arched as a Cupid's bow. The sidelong,
lowering, villanous expression which had formerly been but occasional was
now habitual and heightened. It was the look of the bison before it
gores. It is true, however, that even yet on the countenance there
lingered the trace of that lavish favour bestowed on it by nature. An
artist would still have said, "How handsome that ragamuffin must have
been!" And true is it, also, that there was yet that about the bearing
of the man which contrasted his squalor, and seemed to say that he had
not been born to wear rags and loiter at midnight amongst the haunts of
thieves. Nay, I am not sure that you would have been as incredulous now,
if told that the wild outlaw before you had some claim by birth or by
nurture to the rank of gentleman, as you would had you seen the gay
spendthrift in his gaudy day. For then he seemed below, and now he
seemed above, the grade in which he took place. And all this made his
aspect yet more sinister, and the impression that he was dangerous yet
more profound. Muscular strength often remains to a powerful frame long