"Ah, my lord," he said, in French, "you see I kept my word and was at Aix two days before you. But who is this young gentleman? I do not know him. He was not in your suite at Turin, I believe."
"This is my young friend and gentleman, Monsieur de Langdale," answered Lord Montagu, with much assumed politeness. "Let me present him to you, Signor Morini. He is a philosopher like yourself, and deals, as you do, in the great science of physiognomy, though of course his youth places him far behind you in knowledge."
Edward and Morini exchanged bows and salutations, the latter either not at all perceiving, or not appearing to perceive, that there was a vein of jest running through Lord Montagu's politeness which might not have been very flattering to his vanity. "Ha! a philosopher!" he exclaimed. "I am right glad to see any one who, in these degenerate times, devotes himself to the only great, pure, and noble pursuits on which the mind of a man can expatiate. What is the particular science to which you have most addicted yourself, young gentleman? What have you lately been studying?"
"Nothing," replied Edward, almost inclined to be rude. "My lord does me too much honor in calling me a philosopher."
"Nay, nay," said Montagu, laughing: "if I may judge from letters I have received, and from what you yourself have told me, you have been lately studying much,—fair ladies' hearts and prime ministers' heads,—Ned. He has quite captivated a duchess and smoothed down a cardinal. But what he means, learned signor, is, that, having been badly wounded by a sword which let rather too much daylight into the dark chamber of his chest, his only study was to get well again."
"Did you anoint the blade?" asked Morini: "the blade should always be anointed at the proper hour of the moon. Had I been here he would have been well in a few days."
"Probably," said Montagu, gravely; "but we had no one but poor, ignorant surgeons, who forgot the precaution you mention."
"Ah, they are stupid and hard-headed creatures," replied the other: "they never consider that man is composed of an animal and an ethereal part indissolubly linked together, each depending upon the other, and both affected by higher influences. The sympathies which exist between all created things they take into no account. The compelling powers of the whole heavenly host upon the human frame, upon every part thereof,—upon man as an animal, upon man as an angel, upon man's whole fate and destiny, upon his mixed and separate natures,—are mere visions to them; and the time will come, my lord, when this mere material view will prevail over all the earth: intelligence—spirit—will be superseded, and engines will be invented to do the work of mind as well as matter. Where was your wound, young gentleman?"
"Here on the right breast the sword entered," answered Edward; "and it went out here, just under the shoulder."
"A dangerous wound!" replied the little man, gravely. "None but a brother's hand could have inflicted that wound and the sufferer survive."