In many circumstances there was still a great degree of similarity between them: both were deeply versed in classical literature, and were endowed with every elegant attainment; and both possessed that wild and vivid imagination which taught them to combine in one strange and heterogeneous system the pure doctrines of Christianity, the theories of the Pagan philosophers, and the strange, mysterious notions of the dark sciences they pursued. Amongst many fancies derived from the Greeks, it seems certain that both Sir Cesar and Cornelius Agrippa received, as an undoubted fact, the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmission of the souls through the various human bodies for a long period of existence: the spirit retaining, more or less, in different men, the recollection of events which had occurred to them at other periods of being. One striking difference, however, existed between these two celebrated men. Cornelius Agrippa was all mildness, gentleness, and suavity; while Sir Cesar, irritated by the memory of much sorrow, was wild, vehement, and impetuous; ever striving to do good, it is true, but hasty and impatient under contradiction. The same sort of mental excitement hurried him on to move from land to land and place to place, without seeming ever to pause for any length of time; and as he stood not upon the ceremony of introduction, but made himself known to whomsoever the fancy of the moment might lead him, he was celebrated in almost every part of the world. So much as we have said seemed necessary, in order to give our readers some insight into the character of the extraordinary man whose history is strongly interwoven with the web of the present narrative, and to prevent its being supposed that he was an imaginary being devised for the nonce; but we shall now proceed with him in his proper person. "Let us reason," said Sir Cesar, breaking form abruptly, after he had ridden on with the young knight some way in silence; "let us reason of nature and philosophy; of things that are, and of things that may be; for I would fain expel from my brain a crowd of sad thoughts and dark imaginings, that haunt the caverns of memory." "I should prove but a slow reasoner," replied the young knight, "when compared with one whose mind, if report speak truth, has long explored the deepest paths of science, and discovered the full wealth of nature."