Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood. Volumes I and II — John Shaqi
Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood. Volumes I and IIJames, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
General
Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood. Volumes I and II
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction
On entering the supper-room, one after another of the inside
passengers were found stripping themselves of various parts of their
travelling costume, and in one of them Charles Tyrrell instantly
recognised a person whom he had seen more than once before. This was a
gentleman somewhat past the prime of life; that is to say, he might be
fifty-five or fifty-six years of age. He was hale and well, however,
though of a thin and meager habit; and his whole countenance bespoke
health, not of an exuberant, but of a durable kind. His face, though
undoubtedly handsome, was not of a pleasant character; the eyebrows
ran up as well as the eyes; the nose was somewhat sharp and pointed;
the cheek bones rather too high; the forehead not low, but wide rather
than high, and a monstrous protuberance of that superior part of the
back of the head in which phrenologists have thought fit to place the
organs of self-esteem, self-will, caution, &c. The line might be made
to comprise all those organs which tend to combativeness and
acquisitiveness, though the former in somewhat of a less degree than
the latter.
The shape of a man's head has a far greater share in giving expression
to his face than people in general imagine; and as we have said,
though one could not help acknowledging that Mr. Driesen must have
been a handsome man in his youth, there was about his countenance that
look and air which gave to the features of Voltaire the expression of
an old and malicious monkey. Charles Tyrrell had seen him frequently
with his father, with whom he used to spend a part of every year, and
what he had seen of him under such circumstances had not by any means
tended to diminish the impression of dislike which his face had at
first produced.
Mr. Driesen was descended from a family originally German, but which
had been settled for many centuries in England. He was possessed of a
small property, which, during his youth, afforded him quite sufficient
to live upon in comfort without pursuing any profession in order to
make it larger. He had studied the law, but he never attempted to
practise it; and had devoted himself, during many years, to the
pursuit of that sort of philosophy which prepared the way for, and
ushered in, not so much the French revolution as the horrors and
impieties which accompanied an act that might have passed over,
perhaps, innocuously, had not the whole moral and religious
foundations of society been previously shaken in France by the efforts
of men who fancied they were pursuing wisdom, when, in fact, they were
pursuing vanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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