nty-three; but his
long-continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils
of his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed
upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had
the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the worn-out
grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court reigned at
Guerande.

Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval
face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over
his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a resemblance
to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt, Mieris, and Gerard
Dow so loved to paint, in pictures which need a microscope to be fully
appreciated. His countenance might be said to be sunken out of sight
beneath those innumerable wrinkles, produced by a life in the open air
and by the habit of watching his country in the full light of the sun
from the rising of that luminary to the sinking of it. Nevertheless, to
an observer enough remained of the imperishable forms of the human face
which appealed to the soul, even though the eye could see no more than a
lifeless head. The firm outline of the face, the shape of the brow, the
solemnity of the lines, the rigidity of the nose, the form of the bony
structure which wounds alone had slightly altered,--all were signs
of intrepidity without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience
without discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without
inconstancy. In him, the Breton granite was made man.

The baron had no longer any teeth. His lips, once red, now violet, and
backed by hard gums only (with which he ate the bread his wife took
care to soften by folding it daily in a damp napkin), drew inward to the
mouth with a sort of grin, which gave him an expression both threatening
and proud. His chin seemed to seek his nose; but in that nose, humped in
the middle, lay the signs of his energy and his Breton resistance. His
skin, marbled with red blotches appearing through his wrinkles, showed
a powerfully sanguine temperament, fitted to resist fatigue and to
preserve him, as no doubt it did, from apoplexy. The head was crowned
with abundant hair, as white as silver, which fell in curls upon his
shoulders. The face, extinguished, as we have said, in part, lived
through the glitter of the black eyes in their brown orbits, casting
thence the last flames of a generous and loyal soul. Th