This is nothing, this bit of dialogue, and, thus transcribed, it will not explain why these simple phrases were the cause of my regarding André de Jussat as a being apart from any I had known until then; why, when I had gone to my room, where a servant commenced to unpack my trunk, I thought more of him than of his fragile and graceful sister: nor why, at dinner and all the evening, I had eyes only for him. My naïve astonishment in the presence of this proud and manly fellow was derived, however, from a very simple fact; I had grown up in a purely intellectual medium in which the only estimable forms of life were the intellectual. I had had for comrades the first of my class, all as delicate and frail as I was myself, without condescending ever to notice those who excelled in the exercises of the body, and who beside only found in these exercises an excuse for brutality. All my masters whom I liked best, and the few old friends of my father, were also able men. When I had pictured the heroes of romance, they were always mental machines more or less complicated; but I had never imagined their physical condition. If I had ever thought of the superiority which the beautiful and firm animal energy of man represents, it was in an abstract manner, but I had never felt it. Count André, who was thirty years old, presented an admirable example of this superiority. Figure to yourself a man of medium size, but lusty as an athlete, with broad shoulders and a slender waist, gestures which betrayed strength and suppleness--gestures in which one felt that the movement was distributed with that perfection which gives adroit and precise agility--hands and feet nervous, showing race, with a martial countenance, one of those _bistre_ complexions behind which the blood flows, rich in iron and in globules; a square forehead under bushy black hair, a mustache of the same color over a firm and tightly closed mouth, brown eyes, very near to a nose which was slightly arched, which gives to the profile a vague suggestion of a bird of prey. Last a bold chin, squarely cut, completed the physiognomy of a character of invincible will. And the will is the whole person; action made man. It seemed as if there were in this officer, broken to all bodily exercises, ready for all exploits, no rupture of equilibrium between thought and action, and that his whole being passed entire into his smallest gestures. I have seen him mount a horse so as to realize the ancient fable of the Centaur, put ten balls in succession at thirty paces into a playing card, leap ditches with the lightness of a professional gymnast, and sometimes, to amuse his young brother, leap over a table, only touching it with his hands.