In Bruno, that abstract theory of the perpetual motion of
the world was a visible person talking with you.
And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he
presented himself in the comely Dominican habit. The eyes which in
their last sad protest against stupidity would mistake, or miss
altogether, the image of the Crucified, were to-day, for the most
part, kindly observant eyes, registering every detail of that
singular company, all the physiognomic lights which come by the way
on people, and, through them, on things, the "shadows of ideas" in
men's faces (De Umbris Idearum was the title of his discourse),
himself pleasantly animated by them, in turn. There was "heroic
gaiety" there; only, as usual with gaiety, the passage of a peevish
cloud seemed all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking,
by many a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of
repose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that
looked, after all, made for suffering--already half pleading, half
defiant--as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake
a hair's breadth from its estimate of yourself.
Like nature, like nature in that country of his birth, the Nolan, as
he delighted to proclaim himself, loved so well that, born wanderer
as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or later, at the
risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without selection, and,
with all his contempt for the "asinine" vulgar, was not fastidious.
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