"because everybody is
afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me." And he laid his plump,
yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds had been perching ten
minutes before, upon the formidable brute's head, and looked him
straight in the eyes. "You big dogs are all cowards," he said,
addressing the animal contemptuously, with his face and the dog's
within an inch of each other. "You would kill a poor cat, you infernal
coward. You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal coward.
Anything that you can surprise unawares--anything that is afraid of
your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slobbering,
bloodthirsty mouth, is the thing you like to fly at. You could
throttle me at this moment, you mean, miserable bully, and you daren't
so much as look me in the face, because I'm not afraid of you. Will
you think better of it, and try your teeth in my fat neck? Bah! not
you!" He turned away, laughing at the astonishment of the men in the
yard, and the dog crept back meekly to his kennel. "Ah! my nice
waistcoat!" he said pathetically. "I am sorry I came here. Some of
that brute's slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat." Those words
express another of his incomprehensible oddities. He is as fond of
fine clothes as the veriest fool in existence, and has appeared in four
magnificent waistcoats already--all of light garish colours, and all
immensely large even for him--in the two days of his residence at
Blackwater Park.

His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as the
singular inconsistencies in his character, and the childish triviality
of his ordinary tastes and pursuits.

I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with all of
us during the period of his sojourn in this place. He has evidently
discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him (she confessed as much to
me when I pressed her on the subject)--but he has also found out that
she is extravagantly fond of flowers. Whenever she wants a nosegay he
has got one to give her, gathered and arranged by himself, and greatly
to my amusement, he is always cunningly provided with a duplicate,
composed of exactly the same flowers, grouped in exactly the same way,
to appease his icily jealous wife before she can so much as think
herself aggrieved. His management of the Countess (in public) is a
sight to see. He bows to her, he habitually addresses her as "my
angel," he carries his canaries to pay her little visi