And to-morrow he sees that father for the first time! He must have burned with desire, since his whole life had been one preparation for this meeting, and his foster-parents and teachers had been a sort of chalcographic company, who had engraved in copper a portrait of the author of his life-book so magnificently opposite the title-page. His father, Gaspard de Cesara, Knight of the Golden Fleece (whether Spanish or Austrian I should be glad to be precisely informed myself), a spirit naturally three-edged, sharp, and brightly polished, had in his youth wild energies, for whose play only a battle-field or a kingdom would have been roomy enough, and which in high life had as little power of motion as a sea-monster in a harbor. He satisfied them by playing star-parts with all ranks in comedies and tragedies, by the prosecution of all sciences, and by an eternal tour: he was intimate and often involved with great and small men and courts, yet always marched along as a stream with its own waves through the sea of the world. And now, after having completed his travels by land and sea round the whole circumference of life, round its joys and capacities and systems, he still continues (especially since the Present, that ape of the Past, is always running after him) to pursue his studies and geographical journeyings; but always for scientific purposes, just as he visits now the European battle-fields. As for the rest, he is not at all gloomy, still less gay, but composed and calm; he does not even hate and love, blame and praise other men any more than he does himself, but values every one in his kind, the dove in hers and the tiger in his. What often seems vengeance is merely the determined, soldier-like tread wherewith a man, who can never flee and fear, but only knows how to advance and stand his ground, tramples down larks'-eggs and ears of corn. I think that the corner which I have thus snipped off from the Whistonian chart of this comet, for the benefit of mankind, is broad enough. I will, before I discourse further, reserve the privilege to myself, of sometimes calling Don Gaspard _the Knight_, without appending to him the Golden Fleece; and, secondly, of not being obliged by courtesy towards the short memory of readers to steal from his son Cesara (under which designation the old man will never appear) his Christian name, which, to be sure, is _Albano_.