And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of
these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so
much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly
pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above
all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been
suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture,
it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with
effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple
humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence --an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from
a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
trepidancy --an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by
reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action
was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from
a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in
abeyance) to that species of energetic concision --that abrupt,
weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation --that leaden,
self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be
observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium,
during the periods of his most intense excitement.
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