Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/25

 fatigue or sorrow whiten the hair. On each side of the head, one saw large ears, almost scarred along the edges by the erosions of an over-abundant blood which seemed ready to gush out at the slightest exertion. The complexion was violet-hued under a brown coating, due to the habit of facing the sun. The eyes, gray, alert, sunken and hidden beneath two black bushes, resembled the eyes of the Kalmucks, who arrived in 1815; if at moments they sparkled, it could only be under the strain of some covetous thought. The nose, depressed at the root, suddenly turned up like the leg of a copper pot. Thick lips harmonizing with an almost repulsive double chin, the beard of which, shaved hardly twice a week, kept a wretched silk handkerchief in a threadbare condition; a neck creased with fat, though very short; and huge cheeks, completing the characteristics of stupid power that sculptors impart to their caryatids. Minoret-Levrault resembled these statues with this difference merely, that they support a building, and he had enough to do to support himself. One may meet many such an Atlas without a world. This man’s head and shoulders were like a block; one might have said, those of a bull raised on his hind legs. The stalwart arms terminated in thick, hard hands, big and powerful, that could and did handle a whip, the reins, or the pitchfork, and with which no postilion ever trifled. This giant’s enormous stomach was supported by thighs as thick as an adult’s body, and by the feet of an elephant. Anger must have been rare with