Stretched out as if to guard the countess, as
a miser guards his hoard, that enormous hand was covered with hair so
thick, it presented such a network of veins and projecting muscles,
that it gave the idea of a branch of birch clasped with a growth of
yellowing ivy.
Children looking at the count's face would have thought him an ogre,
terrible tales of whom they knew by heart. It was enough to see the
width and length of the space occupied by the count in the bed, to
imagine his gigantic proportions. When awake, his gray eyebrows hid
his eyelids in a way to heighten the light of his eye, which glittered
with the luminous ferocity of a wolf skulking on the watch in a
forest. Under his lion nose, with its flaring nostrils, a large and
ill-kept moustache (for he despised all toilet niceties) completely
concealed the upper lip. Happily for the countess, her husband's wide
mouth was silent at this moment, for the softest sounds of that harsh
voice made her tremble. Though the Comte d'Herouville was barely fifty
years of age, he appeared at first sight to be sixty, so much had the
toils of war, without injuring his robust constitution, dilapidated
him physically.
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