Mr. Driesen was a man of talent, however, and a man of learning. He was a profound Greek scholar, a tolerable mathematician, a clear and cutting reasoner, but artful as a sophist; and, aided by his own vanity, deceiving himself while he deceived others. He was fond of all sorts of startling propositions; feared to shock no feelings or opinions, however respectable or however well founded; and he was, moreover, full of rich stores of rare and unusual knowledge, and of reading in works which are sealed to the eye of most men. His memory was unfailing, his fluency great, and he could thus bring to bear upon any subject arguments and quotations startling from their novelty and confounding from their multitude. He made a boast of being without any fixed principle, and Sir Francis Tyrrell did not esteem him at all the less on that account, not being overburdened with principle himself. But there was one secret in his partiality for Mr. Driesen, which was, that his friend was in the custom of comparing him to the famous Mirabeau, whom they had both known in France, in their youth, during the period of his utmost power over the National Assembly. The comparison was not altogether without justice. But it was to Mirabeau's father, the old Marquis de Mirabeau, that Sir Francis Tyrrell bore a strong resemblance rather than to the son. However that might be, the comparison flattered him, and he was fond of the society of Mr. Driesen, who, without bearing by any means a good character for morality, did not, on the contrary, bear a very bad one. He, on his part, had contrived by various means to diminish his own patrimony considerably, and therefore the luxuries of Sir Francis Tyrrell's house were not disagreeable to him; nor, indeed, if the current tales were true, the occasional assistance of Sir Francis Tyrrell's purse. Although there had never existed any very great acquaintance between him and his friend's son; and though, on the part of Charles, there had always been a feeling of antipathy, which he could scarcely explain to himself; in the present instance, no sooner did Mr. Driesen discover who had been his companion in the night-coach, than he advanced to shake hands with him with a warm and friendly air, which Charles Tyrrell could not make up his mind to repel. They sat down together to supper with the rest of the travellers, and the conversation between the two acquaintances took a turn the least likely in the world to be taken between two travellers in a stagecoach. It neither referred to politics, nor war, nor locomotion, nor the supper that was before them; but it referred to Greek and Latin poets, to Hesiod, to Euripides, to Lucan; or else, turning to more modern, but not less unusual topics under such circumstances, commented upon Clement Marot, or inquired into the authenticity of the poems attributed to Clotilde de Surville.