blood, which seemed ready to gush at the least exertion.  His skin was crimson under an outside layer of brown, due to the habit of standing in the sun.  The roving gray eyes, deep-sunken, and hidden by bushy black brows, were like those of the Kalmucks who entered France in 1815; if they ever sparkled it was only under the influence of a covetous thought.  His broad pug nose was flattened at the base.  Thick lips, in keeping with a repulsive double chin, the beard of which, rarely cleaned more than once a week, was encircled with a dirty silk handkerchief twisted to a cord; a short neck, rolling in fat, and heavy cheeks completed the characteristics of brute force which sculptors give to their caryatids.  Minoret-Levrault was like those statues, with this difference, that whereas they supported an edifice, he had more than he could well do to support himself.  You will meet many such Atlases in the world.  The man’s torso was a block; it was like that of a bull standing on his hind-legs.  His vigorous arms ended in a pair of thick, hard hands, broad and strong and well able to handle whip, reins, and pitchfork; hands which his postilions never attempted to trifle with.  The enormous stomach of this giant rested on thighs which were as large as the body of an ordinary adult, and feet like those of an elephant.  Anger was a rare thing with him, but it was terrible, apoplectic, when it did burst forth.  Though violent and quite incapable of reflection, the man had never done anything that justified the sinister suggestions of his bodily presence.  To all those who felt afraid of him his postilions would reply, “Oh! he’s not bad.”

The master of Nemours, to use the common abbreviation of the country, wore a velveteen shooting-jacket of bottle-green, trousers of green linen with great stripes, and an ample yellow waistcoat of goat’s skin, in the pocket of which might be discerned the round outline of a monstrous snuff-box.  A snuff-box to a pug nose is a law without exception.

A son of the Revolution and a spectator of the Empire, Minoret-Levrault did not meddle with politics; as to his religious opinions, he had never set foot in a church except to be married; as to his private principles, he kept them within the civil code; all that the law did not forbid or could not prevent he considered right.  He never read anything but the journal of the department of the Seine-et-Oise, and a few printed instructions relating to his business.  He was considered a clever agriculturist; but his knowledge was only practical.  In him the moral being did not belie the physical.  He seldom spoke, and before speaking he always took a pinch of snuff to give himself time, not to find ideas, but words.  If he had been a talker you would have felt that he was out of keeping with himself.  Reflecting that this elephant minus a trumpet and without a mind was called Minoret-Levrault, we are compelled to agree with Sterne as to the occult power of names, which sometimes ridicule and sometimes foretell characters.