the future of my family, I was unaware of this devoted service
which the Comte de Mortsauf well remembered. Moreover, the antiquity of
our name, the most precious quality of a man in his eyes, added to the
warmth of his greeting. I knew nothing of these reasons until later; for
the time being the sudden transition to cordiality put me at my ease.
When the two children saw that we were all three fairly engaged in
conversation, Madeleine slipped her head from her father's hand, glanced
at the open door, and glided away like an eel, Jacques following
her. They rejoined their mother, and I heard their voices and their
movements, sounding in the distance like the murmur of bees about a
hive.

I watched the count, trying to guess his character, but I became so
interested in certain leading traits that I got no further than
a superficial examination of his personality. Though he was only
forty-five years old, he seemed nearer sixty, so much had the great
shipwreck at the close of the eighteenth century aged him. The crescent
of hair which monastically fringed the back of his head, otherwise
completely bald, ended at the ears in little tufts of gray mingled with
black. His face bore a vague resemblance to that of a white wolf with
blood about its muzzle, for his nose was inflamed and gave signs of a
life poisoned at its springs and vitiated by diseases of long standing.
His flat forehead, too broad for the face beneath it, which ended in a
point, and transversely wrinkled in crooked lines, gave signs of a life
in the open air, but not of any mental activity; it also showed the
burden of constant misfortunes, but not of any efforts made to surmount
them. His cheekbones, which were brown and prominent amid the general
pallor of his skin, showed a physical structure which was likely to
ensure him a long life. His hard, light-yellow eye fell upon mine like
a ray of wintry sun, bright without warmth, anxious without thought,
distrustful without conscious cause. His mouth was violent and
domineering, his chin flat and long. Thin and very tall, he had the
bearing of a gentleman who relies upon the conventional value of his
caste, who knows himself above others by right, and beneath them in
fact. The carelessness of country life had made him neglect his external
appearance. His dress was that of a country-man whom peasants and
neighbors no longer considered except for his territorial worth. His
brown and wiry hands showed that he wore