f vast girth; the nether garments
were of leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding-boots came
half-way up the thigh. A more sturdy, stalwart, strong-built knave
never excited the admiration which physical power always has a right
to command; and Dalibard gazed on him with envy. The pale scholar
absolutely sighed as he thought what an auxiliary to his own scheming
mind would have been so tough a frame!

But even less in form than face did the man of thews and sinews contrast
the man of wile and craft. Opposite that high forehead, with its massive
development of organs, scowled the low front of one to whom thought
was unfamiliar,--protuberant, indeed, over the shaggy brows, where
phrenologists place the seats of practical perception, strongly marked
in some of the brutes, as in the dog, but almost literally void of those
higher organs by which we reason and imagine and construct. But in rich
atonement for such deficiency, all the animal reigned triumphant in
the immense mass and width of the skull behind. And as the hair, long
before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw
before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which
recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good
qualities, under virtuous guidance,--for they have the fidelity, the
obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,--but which, under evil
control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend
the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master.

For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other. At length
Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority,--

"My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your
party!"

"Chiefs, par tous les diables!" growled the other; "we Chouans are all
chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have seen my credentials; you know
that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?"

"For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous. I have
sounded, as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin party, and they are
favourable. This upstart soldier, who has suddenly seized in his iron
grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, is as hateful to them as to you.
But que voulez vous, mon cher? men are men! It is one thing to destroy
Bonaparte; it is another thing to restore the Bourbons. How can the
Jacobin chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bourbons
will forget the old offences and reward the n