Indeed, they mistook for incipient idiocy his continual abstraction of mind.
It is true that all who knew him remarked the singularity of his habits.

His frequent absences from home had given to his proceedings an appearance at once eccentric and mysterious.

Never was young libertine more irregular in his habits than this old man.

He came or failed to come home to his meals, ate it mattered not what or when.

He went out at every hour of the day and night, often slept abroad, and even disappeared for entire weeks at a time.