Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-
browned face, and above them rose a square, massive forehead, with
a fringe of close yellow curls lying round it. His strong, firm
jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had frequently remarked how
much it suggested those old Roman busts which peered out from the
shadows in the corners of his chamber. Under its bluff German
strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but
the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood
that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual
bearing upon his character. In age and in reputation, he was on
the same level as his English companion, but his life and his work
had both been far more arduous. Twelve years before, he had come
as a poor student to Rome, and had lived ever since upon some small
endowment for research which had been awarded to him by the
University of Bonn. Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with
extraordinary tenacity and single-mindedness, he had climbed from
rung to rung of the ladder of fame, until now he was a member of
the Berlin Academy, and there was every reason to believe that he
would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the greatest of German
Universities.
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