His language was ornate, his style was terse and beautiful; in conversation he was voluble and transcendently entertaining; knew everybody and everything; never seemed to read, and yet was always prepared in his cases, and seemed to be a lawyer by intuition.  He was rarely in his office, but always on the street, and always dressed in the extreme of the fashion; lived nowhere, boarded nowhere, slept nowhere, and ate everywhere.  He dined at a restaurant, but scarcely ever at the same twice in succession; would search for hours to find a genial friend to dine with him, and then, if he was in the mood, there was a feast of the body and flow of the soul; went to every ball, danced with everybody, visited the ladies; was learned or frivolous, as suited the ladies’ capacities or attainments; appeared fond of their society, and always spoke of them with ridicule or contempt; married, and separated from his wife, no one knew for what cause, yet still claimed and supported her.  She was the widow of Governor Claiborne, and a magnificent woman; she was a Spaniard by blood, aristocratic in her feelings, eccentric, and, intellectually, a fit companion for Grymes.  She was to Claiborne an admirable wife, but there was little congeniality between her and Grymes.  Grymes knew that it was not possible for any woman to tolerate him as a husband, and was contented to live apart from his wife.  They were never divorced, but lived—­she in New York, or at her villa on Staten Island; Grymes in New Orleans.  He never complained of her; always spoke kindly, and sometimes affectionately of her; denied the separation, and annually visited her.  Their relations were perfectly amicable, but they could not live together.  Grymes could have lived with no woman.  In all things he was sui generis; with no one like him in any one thing, for he was never the same being two consecutive days.  He had no fixed opinions that any one knew of; he was a blatant Democrat, and yet never agreed with them in anything; a great advocate of universal equality, and the veriest aristocrat on earth; he would urge to-day as a great moral or political truth certain principles, and ridicule them with contemptuous scorn to-morrow.  He was the most devout of Christians to-day, the most abandoned infidel to-morrow; and always, and with everybody, striving to appear as base and as abandoned as profligate man could be:  to believe all he said of himself, was to believe him the worst man on earth.  He despised public opinion and mankind generally; still he was kind in his nature, and generous to profligacy; was deeply sympathetic, and never turned from the necessitous without dropping a tear or giving a dollar—­the one he bestowed generously, the other he rarely had to give; but, if an acquaintance was at hand, he would borrow and give, and the charity of heart was as sincere as though the money had been his own.