A well-dressed man had crossed from the opposite side, and was accosting the carrier in charge of the van.  His face, as he stood, was exactly fronting our window.  It was the face of the miniature we had discovered; it was the face of the portrait of the noble three centuries ago.

“Good Heavens!” cried Mr J——­, “that is the face of de V——­, and scarcely a day older than when I saw it in the Rajah’s court in my youth!”

Seized by the same thought, we both hastened downstairs.  I was first in the street; but the man had already gone.  I caught sight of him, however, not many yards in advance, and in another moment I was by his side.

I had resolved to speak to him, but when I looked into his face I felt as if it were impossible to do so.  That eye—­the eye of the serpent—­fixed and held me spellbound.  And withal, about the man’s whole person there was a dignity, an air of pride and station and superiority, that would have made anyone, habituated to the usages of the world, hesitate long before venturing upon a liberty or impertinence.  And what could I say? what was it I would ask?  Thus ashamed of my first impulse, I fell a few paces back, still, however, following the stranger, undecided what else to do.  Meanwhile he turned the corner of the street; a plain carriage was in waiting, with a servant out of livery, dressed like a valet-de-place, at the carriage door.  In another moment he had stepped into the carriage, and it drove off.  I returned to the house.  Mr J——­ was still at the street door.  He had asked the carrier what the stranger had said to him.

“Merely asked whom that house now belonged to.”

The same evening I happened to go with a friend to a place in town called the Cosmopolitan Club, a place open to men of all countries, all opinions, all degrees.  One orders one’s coffee, smokes one’s cigar.  One is always sure to meet agreeable, sometimes remarkable, persons.

I had not been two minutes in the room before I beheld at a table, conversing with an acquaintance of mine, whom I will designate by the initial G——­, the man—­the Original of the Miniature.  He was now without his hat, and the likeness was yet more startling, only I observed that while he was conversing there was less severity in the countenance; there was even a smile, though a very quiet and very cold one.  The dignity of mien I had acknowledged in the street was also more striking; a dignity akin to that which invests some prince of the East—­conveying the idea of supreme indifference and habitual, indisputable, indolent, but resistless power.

G——­ soon after left the stranger, who then took up a scientific journal, which seemed to absorb his attention.

I drew G——­ aside.  “Who and what is that gentleman?”