dimmed the blue of the
sky, the purity of which in all parts, even close to the horizon, showed
the extreme rarefaction of the air. So Minoret-Levrault (for that was
the post master's name) was obliged to shade his eyes with one hand to
keep them from being dazzled. With the air of a man who was tired of
waiting, he looked first to the charming meadows which lay to the
right of the road where the aftermath was springing up, then to the
hill-slopes covered with copses which extend, on the left, from Nemours
to Bouron. He could hear in the valley of the Loing, where the sounds on
the road were echoed back from the hills, the trot of his own horses and
the crack of his postilion's whip.

None but a post master could feel impatient within sight of such
meadows, filled with cattle worthy of Paul Potter and glowing beneath
a Raffaelle sky, and beside a canal shaded with trees after Hobbema.
Whoever knows Nemours knows that nature is there as beautiful as art,
whose mission is to spiritualize it; there, the landscape has ideas and
creates thought. But, on catching sight of Minoret-Levrault an artist
would very likely have left the view to sketch the man, so original was
his in his native commonness. Unite in a human being all the conditions
of the brute and you have a Caliban, who is certainly a great thing.
Wherever form rules, sentiment disappears. The post master, a living
proof of that axiom, presented a physiognomy in which an observer could
with difficulty trace, beneath the vivid carnation of its coarsely
developed flesh, the semblance of a soul. His cap of blue cloth, with
a small peak, and sides fluted like a melon, outlined a head of vast
dimensions, showing that Gall's science has not yet produced its chapter
of exceptions. The gray and rather shiny hair which appeared below the
cap showed that other causes than mental toil or grief had whitened
it. Large ears stood out from the head, their edges scarred with the
eruptions of his over-abundant 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, rare