There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance

Most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains.