"Do you know, Count, who this M. Dantès really is?" asked Debray.
"There's a question for a Ministerial Secretary to ask a member while a journalist sits by! I only know of M. Dantès that he is the most eloquent man I ever listened to. I don't mean that he's the greatest man, or the profoundest statesman, or the wisest politician, or the sagest political economist; but I do mean that, for natural powers of persuasion and denunciation--for natural oratory--I have never known his rival. If Plato's maxim, 'that oratory must be estimated by its effects,' is at all correct, then is M. Dantès the greatest orator in France, for the effect of his oratory is miraculous. There is a sort of magic in his clear, sonorous, powerful, yet most exquisitely modulated voice, and the wave of his arm is like that of a necromancer's wand."
"You are enthusiastic, Count," observed Beauchamp, "but very just. M. Dantès is, indeed, a remarkable man, and possessed of remarkable endowments, both of mind and body. His personal advantages are wonderful. Such a figure and grace as his are alone worth more than all the powers of other distinguished speakers for popular effect. 'The eyes of the multitude are more eloquent than their ears,' as the English Shakespeare says."
"I never saw such eyes and such a face," remarked Debray, "but once in my life. Do you remember the Count of Monte-Cristo, Messieurs?"
"We shall not soon forget him," was the reply. "But this man differs greatly from the Count in most respects, though certainly not unlike him in others."
"True," replied the Secretary; "in manners, habits, costume and a thousand other things there is a marked difference. Besides, the Count was said to be incalculably rich, while the Deputy has every appearance of being in very moderate circumstances. But he leads a life so retired that he is known only in the Chambers and in his public character. I allude to the Deputy's person, when I speak of resemblance to that wonderful Count, who set all Paris in a fever, and, more wonderful still, kept it so for a whole season. There is I know not what in his air and manners that often recalls to me that extraordinary man. There are the same large and powerful eyes, the same brilliant teeth for which the women envied the Count so much, the same graceful and dignified figure, the same peculiar voice, the same good taste in dress, and, above all, the same colorless, pallid face, as if, to borrow the idea of the Countess of G----, he had risen from the dead, or was a visitant from another world, or a vampire of this. Her celebrated friend, Lord B----, she used to say, was the only man she ever knew with such a complexion."