The sieur de Chastelar was at this time in the very prime of youthful manhood, and might have been some few years, and but few, the senior of the lovely being before whose presence he bent in adoration humbler, and more fervently expressed, than the reverence due from a mere subject to a mortal queen. Tall and fairly-proportioned, with a countenance in which almost feminine softness of expression was blended, with an aspect of the eye and lip, which proved the vicinity of bolder and more manly qualities, slumbering but not extinct, he seemed at the first glance a man most eminently qualified to win a female heart. And who, that looked upon the broad and massive brow, and the quick glance of that eye, fraught with intelligence, could doubt but that the mind within was equal to the more perishable beauties of the form in which it was encompassed? And when to all this was added, that the sieur de Chastelar had already won a name in his green youth that ranked with those of gray-haired veterans in the lists of glory; that in all manly exercises, as in all softer accomplishments, he owned no superior; that the most skilful master of defence, the far-famed _Vicentio Saviola_, confessed De Chastelar his equal in the quickness of eye, the readiness of hand and foot which had combined to render him the most distinguished swordsman of the day; that the wildest and most untameable chargers that ever were compelled to undergo the _manége_, might as well have striven to shake off a portion of themselves, as to dismount De Chasteler by any display of violence and power; that his hand could draw the cloth-yard arrow to the head, and speed it to its aim as truly as the fleetest archer that ever twanged a bow in Sherwood; that he moved in the stately measure of the pavon, or the livelier _galliarde_, with that grace peculiar to his nation; that, in the richness of his voice, his execution and taste on lute or guitar, he might have vied with the sons of Italy herself; in short, that all perfections which were deemed most requisite to form a gentleman were united in De Chastelar, what female heart, that was not proof to all the allurements of love or fancy, could hope to make an adequate resistance? Young, handsome, romantic, ardent in his hopes, enthusiastic almost to madness in his affections, he had been captivated years before in the gay salons of the French capitol, by the beauty and irresistible fascinations of the princess.