Gondremark has thus some of the clumsier characters of the self-made man, combined with an inordinate, almost a besotted, pride of intellect and birth.

Heavy, bilious, selfish, inornate, he sits upon this court and country like an incubus.
But it is probable that he preserves softer gifts for necessary purposes.
Indeed, it is certain, although he vouchsafed none of it to me, that this cold and stolid politician possesses to a great degree the art of ingratiation, and can be all things to all men.

Hence there has probably sprung up the idle legend that in private life he is a gross romping voluptuary.

Nothing, at least, can well be more surprising than the terms of his connection with the Princess.

Older than her husband, certainly uglier, and, according to the feeble ideas common among women, in every particular less pleasing, he has not only seized the complete command of all her thought and action, but has imposed on her in public a humiliating part.