as was worn by the wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign of
poverty. A blue coat with high collar, and half of military fashion, was
buttoned tight over a chest of vast girth; the nether garments were of
leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding-boots came half-way
up the thigh. A more sturdy, stalwart, strong-built knave never excited
the admiration which physical power always has a right to command; and
Dalibard gazed on him with envy. The pale scholar absolutely sighed as
he thought what an auxiliary to his own scheming mind would have been so
tough a frame!

But even less in form than face did the man of thews and sinews contrast
the man of wile and craft. Opposite that high forehead, with its massive
development of organs, scowled the low front of one to whom thought was
unfamiliar,--protuberant, indeed, over the shaggy brows, where
phrenologists place the seats of practical perception, strongly marked in
some of the brutes, as in the dog, but almost literally void of those
higher organs by which we reason and imagine and construct. But in rich
atonement for such deficiency, all the animal reigned triumphant in the
immense mass and width of the skull behind. And as the hair, long
before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw
before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which
recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good
qualities, under virtuous guidance,--for they have the fidelity, the
obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,--but which, under evil
control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend
the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master.

For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other. At length
Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority,--