was enough of itself to give him, in my eyes, an official superiority,
before which I bowed.

But what worked still more strongly upon my youthful imagination was
his manner. There was something unusually noble about his slender figure
and his delicate, oval-shaped, earnest face, with the high forehead and
the heavy masses of dark, curly hair on the temples. His strongly-marked
eyebrows and a decided Roman nose drew one's attention away from his
eyes, which were light blue, and more in keeping with his pale and
beardless face than with his more energetic features. But yet it was his
eyes that gave one the first impression of him. I learned later to read
his features differently, and to see that in them was reflected the
meeting of the currents of that twofold nature by which his life was
gradually crushed out.

A sweet smile when he talked and a reserved manner gave him a
distinguished air, which at any rate impressed me greatly. He was the
only student I knew who did not wear a student's cap; he used to wear a
flat blue sailor's cap with a short peak, which suited him very well.
When he became eager, as might happen in a dispute--for he was a great
logician, though it was only his intellect that took part in a
discussion, and never, as far as I could see, his heart or his deeper
feelings--his voice would give way; it became overstrained and harsh, as
if from a weak chest. Such encounters always told upon him, and left him
in irritable restlessness for some time after.

One of his peculiarities was that he sometimes went on walking tours of
several days out in the country, both in summer and winter.
Companionship he would never hear of. Had he wished for it, he would
have asked me I knew, and therefore I never thought of forcing myself