What more natural
than for you to compare notes with me, and say, 'We are as one by age; at
that same time I sat upon my mother's lap in my father's carriage,
rolling through the rich English streets, all luxury surrounding me, all
squalid poverty kept far from me. Such is _my_ earliest remembrance as
opposed to yours!'"
Mr. Obenreizer was a black-haired young man of a dark complexion, through
whose swarthy skin no red glow ever shone. When colour would have come
into another cheek, a hardly discernible beat would come into his, as if
the machinery for bringing up the ardent blood were there, but the
machinery were dry. He was robustly made, well proportioned, and had
handsome features. Many would have perceived that some surface change in
him would have set them more at their ease with him, without being able
to define what change. If his lips could have been made much thicker,
and his neck much thinner, they would have found their want supplied.
But the great Obenreizer peculiarity was, that a certain nameless film
would come over his eyes--apparently by the action of his own will--which
would impenetrably veil, not only from those tellers of tales, but from
his face at large, every expression save one of attention. It by no
means followed that his attention should be wholly given to the person
with whom he spoke, or even wholly bestowed on present sounds and
objects. Rather, it was a comprehensive watchfulness of everything he
had in his own mind, and everything that he knew to be, or suspected to
be, in the minds of other men.
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