Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/331

Rh deposed their governors, Generals Miyares and Ceballos. These two officers denounced the movement, and commenced to raise troops to oppose it. The Junta took precautionary measures so as to be prepared against any attack, and meantime sent envoys to the United States and to England; looking to the latter power for protection in the event of an invasion of Venezuela by the French. Don Luis Mendez, Don AndréS Bello, and , a colonel of militia, were selected for this mission.

Bolívar was at that time twenty-seven years of age. There was nothing heroic in his appearance; he was short in stature, thin and narrow-chested, but his rugged, irregular features, gave a look of energy to his sallow countenance. His hair was black and curly; his high narrow forehead was deeply seamed with horizontal lines; he had thick, sensual lips, and beautiful teeth; his large black eyes were sunk deep in their orbits, and sparkled with an unsteady light, indicative of his character. He looked like one possessed by a latent fire, a man of feverish activity, combined with duplicity and arrogance; his profile was that of a deep thinker. Altogether his aspect was that of a man of great ideas, but of small judgment; his deeds do not belie that impression.

At the age of three years he was left an orphan, heir to a rich patrimony, with hundreds of slaves. His tutor was a philosopher of the school of the Cynics; the ideas he learned from him were so extravagant as to verge on lunacy, but he carried them with him throughout his life, and they moulded his career. From him he learned to dream of an ideal form of government, neither monarchical nor republican, in which all offices should be held for life. This tutor was named Simon Rodriguez, and was born in Caracas, the natural son of a priest.

Before he was seventeen years of age, Bolívar went to Europe; he was in Paris when Bonaparte was named First Consul, and professed enthusiastic admiration for his