such a story, already romantic enough in its first outline, would lose nothing in the telling.  An Englishman to begin with, which name of itself, and at all times, is a passport into German favor, but much more since the late memorable wars that but for Englishmen would have drooped into disconnected efforts—­next, an Englishman of rank and of the haute noblesse—­then a soldier covered with brilliant distinctions, and in the most brilliant arm of the service; young, moreover, and yet a veteran by his experience—­fresh from the most awful battle of this planet since the day of Pharsalia,—­radiant with the favor of courts and of imperial ladies; finally (which alone would have given him an interest in all female hearts), an Antinous of faultless beauty, a Grecian statue, as it were, into which the breath of life had been breathed by some modern Pygmalion;—­such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one man’s head, should not have required for its effect the vulgar consummation (and yet to many it was the consummation and crest of the whole) that he was reputed to be rich beyond the dreams of romance or the necessities of a fairy tale.  Unparalleled was the impression made upon our stagnant society; every tongue was busy in discussing the marvelous young Englishman from morning to night; every female fancy was busy in depicting the personal appearance of this gay apparition.

On his arrival at my house, I became sensible of a truth which I had observed some years before.  The commonplace maxim is, that it is dangerous to raise expectations too high.  This, which is thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation.  But in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point.  In anything which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification; while it is certain that ordinary observers, possessing little sensibility, unless where they have been warned to expect, will often fail to see what exists in the most conspicuous splendor.  In this instance it certainly did no harm to the subject of expectation that I had been warned to look for so much.  The warning, at any rate, put me on the lookout for whatever eminence there might be of grandeur in his personal appearance; while, on the other hand, this existed in such excess, so far transcending anything I had ever met with in my experience, that no expectation which it is in words to raise could have been disappointed.

These thoughts traveled with the rapidity of light through my brain, as at one glance my eye took in the supremacy of beauty and power which seemed to have alighted from the clouds before me.  Power, and the contemplation of power, in any absolute incarnation of grandeur or excess, necessarily have the instantaneous effect of quelling all perturbation.  My composure was restored in a moment.  I looked steadily at him.  We both bowed.  And, at the moment when he raised his head from that inclination, I caught the glance of his eye; an eye such as might have been looked for in a face of such noble lineaments—­