social scale.
First of all, the master of the house, a sort of giant--sunburned,
swarthy, with his head between his shoulders--to whom his short nose,
lost in the puffiness of the face, his woolly hair massed like an
Astrakhan cap over a low, headstrong forehead, his bristling eyebrows
with eyes like a wild cat's in ambush, gave the ferocious aspect of a
Kalmuk, of a savage on the frontiers of civilization, who lived by war
and marauding. Luckily the lower part of the face, the thick, double
lips which parted readily in a fascinating, good-humored smile,
tempered with a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul expression that uncouth
ugliness, that original countenance, so original that it forgot to be
commonplace. But his inferior extraction betrayed itself in another
direction by his voice, the voice of a Rhone boatman, hoarse and
indistinct, in which the southern accent became rather coarse than
harsh, and by two broad, short hands, with hairy fingers, square at the
ends and with almost no nails, which, as they rested on the white table
cloth, spoke of their past with embarrassing eloquence. Opposite the
host, on the other side of the table, at which he was a regular guest,
was the Marquis de Monpavon, but a Monpavon who in no wise resembled
the mottled spectre whom we saw in the last chapter; a man of superb
physique, in the prime of life, with a long, majestic nose, the haughty
bearing of a great nobleman, displaying a vast breastplate of spotless
linen, which cracked under the continuous efforts of the chest to bend
forward, and swelled out every time with a noise like that made by a
turkey gobbling, or a peacock spreading his tail. His name Monpavon was
well suited to him.[1]

[1] Paon_, peacock--from Latin pavo, pavonis_.

Belonging to a great family, with wealthy kindred, the Duc de Mora's
friendship had procured for him a receiver-generalship of the first
class. Unfortunately his health had not permitted him to retain that
fine berth--well-informed persons said that his health had nothing to
do with it--and he had been living in Paris for a year past, waiting
until he should be cured, he said, to return to his post. The same
persons asserted that he would never find it again, and that, were it
not for the patronage of certain exalted personages--Be that as it may,
he was the important guest at the breakfast; one could see that by the
way in which the servants waited upon him, by the way in which the
Nabob consult