"The landscape is not displeasing to me. Oh no; it is not so bad. There now, you see, that little farm: it is not so bad. But it is not romantic—not plantureux. It would be strange to me if the English were other than they are. The English are an exact expression of England—their character, constitution, Church, everything. The cliffs of Dover, now. Cæsar might have foretold their future from their mere appearance as he approached them; a traveller might just look at them from his ship, and go back home saying: 'I know the English'—if he be a man of force and grasp and insight. Oh no; that is a little hyperbole perhaps—my little tendency to hyperbole. But, I assure you, the landscape does not displease me...."
In this way he went on purring; did not stop; would not permit me to say anything. His utterance was lazy, nasal; and ever and anon he pipped from his lips, as he droned and rubbed his thigh, a dry pin-point of nothing: this, one could see, was a habit of his being. I cannot now recall a thousandth part of his talk, but I do recall that, as he droned on and on from topic to topic, this thought roved through my brain: "But what a head! what a fount of ideas!"
The man made upon me an impression of great grossness, perhaps from his big bulk, or his manner of ironing his thigh, or his ejection of nothings, or that wallowing in his own self-satisfaction. Round his chin and cheeks ran a bandage of iron-grey beard; his hair was scanty, and bald at the temples, where his forehead ran up into two gulfs of bare skin, so that the skimpy region of hair on his great head resembled a jacket much too small for the person who wears it.
A few minutes before our arrival at Alresford something led him to tell me that he was about to join the house-party of the Prime Minister at Goodford. His servants, I soon saw, were in the carriage next to ours, for as the train drew up a valet ran out to help his master to alight, but his master coolly made use of my shoulder to help himself out as he limped heavily to the platform, and did it with such an air of patronage and old friendship, that, for the life of me, I couldn't help feeling flattered.
I suppose that to be caressed by a force is always pleasant—the purring of a petted cat!—and I understood that the Baron Gregor Kolár was a force.
For now I knew his already well-known name, inasmuch as, after turning away from me on the platform, he turned again, fumbled fretfully for his card, and gave it me. I gave him mine. Then, with a bow-legged rolling of gait which bowled his head aside at each stride, he strolled to the brougham awaiting him.
His brougham and mine ran along the same road for some distance—Goodford, his bourne, being only five miles from Swandale—till we parted at a meeting of roads, and he passed from my mind for a season.