atmosphere glowed above the grass and the pebbles; no cloud 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