His black eyes, long black hair,
brushed behind the ears, and thin, sallow cheeks, were not agreeable;
but they made up a striking physiognomy. The black eyes glittered with
a sullen fire; the thin lips were wreathed with a sardonic smile; and I
was informed that the youth lived the life of a _solitaire_,
voluntarily absenting himself from society, to give his days and nights
to exhausting study.
He read every thing, it was said--history, poetry, political economy,
and theology. Swift was said to be his literary divinity, and Rabelais
was at his elbow always. Poor, uneducated, ignorant of nearly every
thing, he was educating himself for the future--sharpening, by
attrition with the strongest minds in all literatures, ancient and
modern, that trenchant weapon which afterward flashed its superb
lightnings in the heated atmosphere of the great epoch in which he
figured.
Bitter, misanthropic, solitary; burning the midnight lamp, instead of
moving among his fellows in the sunshine, he yet possessed hardy
virtues and a high pride of gentleman. He hated the world at large, it
was said, but loved his few friends with an ardor which shrank at
nothing. One of them owed a sum of money--and Daniel went on foot,
twenty-two miles, to Petersburg, paid it, and returned in the same
manner.
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