e eyebrows and
lashes had disappeared; the skin, grown hard, could not unwrinkle. The
difficulty of shaving had obliged the old man to let his beard grow, and
the cut of it was fan-shaped. An artist would have admired beyond
all else in this old lion of Brittany with his powerful shoulders and
vigorous chest, the splendid hands of the soldier,--hands like those du
Guesclin must have had, large, broad, hairy; hands that once had clasped
the sword never, like Joan of Arc, to relinquish it until the royal
standard floated in the cathedral of Rheims; hands that were often
bloody from the thorns and furze of the Bocage; hands which had pulled
an oar in the Marais to surprise the Blues, or in the offing to signal
Georges; the hands of a guerilla, a cannoneer, a common solder, a
leader; hands still white though the Bourbons of the Elder branch were
again in exile. Looking at those hands attentively, one might have seen
some recent marks attesting the fact that the Baron had recently joined
MADAME in La Vendee. To-day that fact may be admitted. These hands were
a living commentary on the noble motto to which no Guenic had proved
recreant: _Fac!_

His forehead attracted attention by the golden tones of the temples,
contrasting with the brown tints of the hard and narrow brow, which
the falling off of the hair had somewhat broadened, giving still more
majesty to that noble ruin. The countenance--a little material, perhaps,
but how could it be otherwise?--presented, like all the Breton faces
grouped about the baron, a certain savagery, a stolid calm which
resembled the impassibility of the Huguenots; something, one might say,
stupid, due perhaps to the utter repose which follows extreme fatigue,
in which the animal nature alone is visible. Thought was rare. It seemed
to be an effort; its seat was in the heart more than in the head; it
led to acts rather than ideas. But, examining that grand old man with
sustained observation, one could penetrate the mystery of this strange
contradiction to the spirit of the century. He had faiths, sentiments,
inborn so to speak, which allowed him to dispense with thought. His
duty, life had taught him. Institutions and religion thought for him.
He reserved his mind, he and his kind, for action, not dissipating it
on useless things which occupied the minds of other persons. He drew
his thought from his heart like his sword from its scabbard, holding it
aloft in his ermined hand, as on his scutcheon