The others brought their lamps and candles near, and the colonel of the
Twenty-third of the line appeared as if he were in a chapel illuminated
for his lying in state.

One would have said that the man was asleep. The perfect preservation of
the body attested the paternal care of the murderer. It was truly a
remarkable preparation, and would have borne comparison with the finest
European mummies described by Vicq d'Azyr in 1779, and by the younger
Puymaurin in 1787. The part best preserved, as is always the case, was
the face. All the features had maintained a proud and manly expression.
If any old friend of the colonel had been at the opening of the third
box, he would have recognized him at first sight. Undoubtedly the point
of the nose was a little sharper, the nostrils less expanded and
thinner, and the bridge a little more marked, than in the year 1813. The
eyelids were thinned, the lips pinched, the corners of the mouth drawn
down, the cheek bones too prominent, and the neck visibly shrunken,
which exaggerated the prominence of the chin and larynx. But the eyelids
were closed without contraction, and the sockets much less hollow than
one could have expected; the mouth was not at all distorted, like the
mouth of a corpse; the skin was slightly wrinkled, but had not changed
color,--it had only become a little more transparent, showing after a
fashion the color of the tendons, the fat, and the muscles, wherever it
rested directly upon them. It also had a rosy tint which is not
ordinarily seen in embalmed corpses. Dr. Martout explained this anomaly
by saying that if the colonel had actually been dried alive, the
globules of the blood were not decomposed, but simply collected in the
capillary vessels of the skin and subjacent tissues, where they still
preserved their proper color, and could be seen more easily than
otherwise on account of the semi-transparency of the skin.