Professor Valeyon smoked for a while in silence, occasionally casting
puzzled and searching glances at the young man, who took up a book from
the table--it happened to be a volume of Celestial Mechanics--and began
to read it with great apparent interest. His face was an open and
certainly not unpleasant one; very mobile, however, and vivid in its
expressions; the eyebrows straight and delicate, and the eyes bright and
powerful. The forehead was undeniably fine, prominently and capaciously
developed. Nevertheless--and this was what puzzled the professor--there
was a very evident lack of something in the face, in no way interfering
with its intellectual aspect, but giving it, at times, an unnatural and
even uncanny look. In meeting the young man's eyes, the old gentleman
was ever and anon conscious of a disposition to recoil and shudder, and,
at the same time, felt impelled, by what resembled a magnetic
attraction, to gaze the harder. Did the very fact that some universal
human characteristic was omitted from this person's nature endow him
with an exceptional and peculiar power? There was an uncertainty, in
talking and associating with him, as to what he would do or say; an
ignorance of what might be his principles and points of view; an
impossibility of supposing him governed by common laws.
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