e.

His head was unhelmeted, but he wore the rest of his ponderous and
bright armour, which indeed he rarely laid aside. Over his shoulders
hung a strong surcoat, made of the dressed skin of a huge wild boar, the
hoofs being of solid silver and the tusks of the same. The skin of the
head was so arranged, that, drawn over the casque, when the Baron was
armed, or over his bare head in the fashion of a hood, as he often
affected when the helmet was laid aside, and as he now wore it, the
effect was that of a grinning, ghastly monster, and yet the countenance
which it overshadowed scarce required such horrors to improve those
which were natural to its ordinary expression.

The upper part of De la Marck's face, as Nature had formed it, almost
gave the lie to his character, for though his hair, when uncovered,
resembled the rude and wild bristles of the hood he had drawn over
it, yet an open, high, and manly forehead, broad ruddy cheeks, large,
sparkling, light coloured eyes, and a nose which looked like the beak
of the eagle, promised something valiant and generous. But the effect of
these more favourable traits was entirely overpowered by his habits of
violence and insolence, which, joined to debauchery and intemperance,
had stamped upon the features a character inconsistent with the rough
gallantry which they would otherwise have exhibited. The former had,
from habitual indulgence, swollen the muscles of the cheeks and those
around the eyes, in particular the latter; evil practices and habits had
dimmed the eyes themselves, reddened the part of them that should have
been white, and given the whole face a hideous likeness of the monster
which it was the terrible Baron's pleasure to resemble. But from an odd
sort of contradiction, De la March, while he assumed in other respects
the appearance of the Wild Boar, and even seemed pleased with the name,
yet endeavoured, by the length and growth of his beard, to conceal the
circumstance that had originally procured him that denomination. This
was an unusual thickness and projection of the mouth and upper jaw,
which, with the huge projecting side teeth, gave that resemblance to the
bestial creation, which, joined to the delight that De la Marck had in
hunting the forest so called, originally procured for him the name of
the Boar of Ardennes. The beard, broad, grisly, and uncombed, neither
concealed the natural horrors of the countenance, nor dignified its
brutal expression.

The