The Prime Minister | Page 5

are very much in
favour of the well-born man, but exceptions may exist. It was not
generally believed that Ferdinand Lopez was well born;--but he was a
gentleman. And this most precious rank was acceded to him although
he was employed,--or at least had been employed,--on business which
does not of itself give such a warrant of position as is supposed to be
afforded by the bar and the church, by the military services and by
physic. He had been on the Stock Exchange, and still in some manner,
not clearly understood by his friends, did business in the City.
At the time with which we are now concerned Ferdinand Lopez was
thirty-three years old, and as he had begun life early he had been long
before the world. It was known of him that he had been at a good
English private school, and it was reported, on the solitary evidence of
one of who had been there as his schoolfellow, that a rumour was
current in the school that his school bills were paid by an old gentleman
who was not related to him. Thence, at the age of seventeen, he had
been sent to a German university, and at the age of twenty-one had
appeared in London, in a stockbroker's office, where he was soon
known as an accomplished linguist, and as a very clever
fellow,--precocious, not given to many pleasures, apt for work, but
considered hardly trustworthy by employers, not as being dishonest,

but as having a taste for being a master rather than a servant. Indeed his
period of servitude was very short. It was not in his nature to be active
on behalf of others. He was soon active for himself, and at one time it
was supposed that he was making a fortune. Then it was known that he
had left his regular business, and it was supposed that he had lost all
that he had ever made or had ever possessed. But nobody, not even his
own bankers, or his own lawyer,--not even the old woman who looked
after his linen,-- ever really knew the state of his affairs.
He was certainly a handsome man,--his beauty being of a sort which
men are apt to deny and women to admit lavishly. He was nearly six
feet tall, very dark and very thin, with regular well- cut features,
indicating little to the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of
self-possession. His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond an
absolutely black moustache. His teeth were perfect, in form and in
whiteness,--a characteristic which though it may be a valued item in a
general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally recommend
a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance. But about the
mouth and chin of this man there was a something of a softness,
perhaps in the play of his lips, perhaps in the dimple, which in some
degree lessened the feeling of hardness which was produced by the
square brow and bold, unflinching, combative eyes. They who knew
him and like him were reconciled by the lower face. The greater
number who knew him and did not like him, felt and resented,--even
though in nine cases out of ten they might, express no resentment even
to themselves,--the pugnacity of his steady glance.
For he was essentially one of those men who are always, in the inner
workings of their minds, defending themselves and attacking others. He
could not give a penny to a woman at a crossing without a look which
argued at full length her injustice in making her demand, and his
freedom from all liability let him walk the crossing as often as he might.
He could not seat himself in a railway carriage without a lesson to his
opposite neighbour that in all the mutual affairs of travelling,
arrangement of feet, disposition of bags, and opening of windows, it
would be that neighbour's duty to submit and his to exact. It was,
however, for the spirit rather than for the thing itself that he combatted.

The woman with the broom got her penny. The opposite gentleman
when once by a glance he had expressed submission was allowed his
own way with the legs and with the window. I would not say that
Ferdinand Lopez was prone to do ill-natured things; but he was
imperious, and he had learned to carry his empire in his eye.
The reader must submit to be told one or two further and still smaller
details respecting the man, and then the man shall be allowed to make
his own way. No one of those around him knew how much care he took
to dress himself well, or how careful he was that no one should know it.
His very tailor