s, was horribly long and
bulbous; in fact, it did its best to conceal an opening which it would
be an insult to the human countenance to call a mouth; within, three or
four tusks were visible, endowed, as it seemed, with a proper motion and
fitting into each other. His fleshy ears drooped by their own weight,
giving the creature a whimsical resemblance to a dog.

His complexion, tainted, no doubt, by various metallic infusions as
prescribed by some Hippocrates, verged on black. A pointed skull,
scarcely covered by a few straight hairs like spun glass, crowned this
forbidding face with red spots. Finally, though the man was very thin
and of medium height, he had long arms and broad shoulders.

In spite of these hideous details, and though he looked fully seventy,
he did not lack a certain cyclopean dignity; he had aristocratic manners
and the confident demeanor of a rich man.

Any one who could have found courage enough to study him, would have
seen his history written by base passions on this noble clay degraded to
mud. Here was the man of high birth, who, rich from his earliest
youth, had given up his body to debauchery for the sake of extravagant
enjoyment. And debauchery had destroyed the human being and made another
after its own image. Thousands of bottles of wine had disappeared under
the purple archway of that preposterous nose, and left their dregs on
his lips. Long and slow digestion had destroyed his teeth. His eyes had
grown dim under the lamps of the gaming table. The blood tainted with
impurities had vitiated the nervous system. The expenditure of force in
the task of digestion had undermined his intellect. Finally, amours had
thinned his hair. Each vice, like a greedy heir, had stamped possession
on some part of the living body.

Those who watch nature detect her in jests of the shrewdest irony. For
instance, she places toads in the neighborhood of flowers, as she had
placed this man by the side of this rose of love.

"Will you play the violin this evening, my dear Duke?" asked the woman,
as she unhooked a cord to let a handsome curtain fall over the door.

"Play the violin!" thought Prince Emilio. "What can have happened to my
palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman's bed, and she certainly
thinks herself at home--she has taken off her cloak! Have I, like
Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those dreams
in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?"

The unknown