Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/85

 puritanical profile, cold coloring, mathematical proportions, a certain narrowness in the almost concise face, keen eyes and serious mouths, something aristocratic, less in the sentiment than in the habits, more in the ideas than in the character. All have high foreheads, but with a sloping at the top, which betrays a materialistic tendency. You will find these chief characteristics of head and likeness of face in the portraits of all the encyclopedists, the orators of the Gironde, and the men of that time whose religious beliefs were almost nil, who called themselves deists and were atheists. The deist is an atheist without his obligations. Old Minoret had this sort of a forehead, but furrowed with wrinkles, and which acquired a kind of naïveté from the way in which his silvery hair, drawn back like that of a woman at her toilette, curled in light tufts over his black coat, for he was obstinately dressed, as in his youth, in black silk stockings, gold buckled shoes, paduasoy breeches, a white waistcoat crossed by the black ribbon, and a black coat decorated with the red rosette. This distinguished head, whose cold whiteness was softened by the yellow tones of old age, was in the full light of a window. Just when the postmistress arrived, the doctor’s blue eyes, with moistened lids and softened outlines, were fixed upon the altar; a new conviction gave them a new expression. His spectacles marked the place at which he had left off reading in his prayerbook. With his arms crossed on his chest, this tall, gaunt old man, standing in an attitude expressive