There you have the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture: a character that braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was, that looked possessed by the devil.
We heard different rumours about him from time to time.

Sometimes they said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books; sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry; sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest people in the lowest slums of London.

Anyhow, a solitary, vicious, underground life was the life the Colonel led.

Once, and once only, after his return to England, I myself saw him, face to face.
About two years before the time of which I am now writing, and about a year and a half before the time of his death, the Colonel came unexpectedly to my lady's house in London.

It was the night of Miss Rachel's birthday, the twenty-first of June; and there was a party in honour of it, as usual.