winter he supplemented to these an ancient sheepskin coat. He was sixty
years of age, very powerfully built, and possessing enormous strength.
The expression upon his face showed that his will was as strong as
his thews and sinews. Beneath his shaggy eyebrows twinkled a pair of
light-gray eyes, which darkened when a fit of passion overtook him, and
this was no unusual occurrence.

During his military career in the army of the Conde, he had received
a sabre cut across his cheek, and the cicatrice imparted a strange and
unpleasant expression to his face. He was not a bad-hearted man, but
headstrong, violent, and tyrannical to a degree. The peasants saluted
him with a mixture of respect and dread as he walked to the chapel, to
which he was a regular attendant on Sundays, with his son. During the
Mass he made the responses in an audible voice, and at its conclusion
invariably put a five-franc piece into the plate. This, his subscription
to the newspaper, and the sum he paid for being shaved twice each week,
constituted the whole of his outlay upon himself. He kept an excellent
table, however; plump fowls, vegetables of all kinds, and the most
delicious fruit were never absent from it. Everything, however, that
appeared upon his well-plenished board was the produce of his fields,
gardens, or woods. The nobility and gentry of the neighborhood
frequently invited him to their hospitable tables, for they looked upon
him as the head and chief of the nobility of the county; but he always
refused their invitations, saying plainly, "No man who has the slightest
respect for himself will accept hospitalities which he is not in a
position to return." It was not the grinding clutch of poverty that
drove the Duke to this exercise of severe economy, for his income from
his estates brought him in fifty thousand francs per annum; and it was
reported that his investments brought him in as much more. As a matter
of course, therefore, he was looked upon as a miser, and a victim to the