He was of high stature, thin, with an aquiline nose, sharp chin, and hollow cheeks.

His dark eyes shot forth fire; a red hood girt with a crown of laurels bound his lean brows.

His bones pierced through the tight brown cloak that descended to his heels.

He saluted me with deference, tempered by a sort of fierce pride, and addressed me in a speech more obscure and incorrect than that of those Gauls with whom the divine Julius filled both his legions and the Curia.

At last I understood that he had been born near Fiesole, in an ancient Etruscan colony that Sulla had founded on the banks of the Arno, and which had prospered; that he had obtained municipal honours, but that he had thrown himself vehemently into the sanguinary quarrels which arose between the senate, the knights, and the people, that he had been defeated and banished, and now he wandered in exile throughout the world.