he had a malady called in the
provinces "hot liver," perhaps to excuse his monstrous appetite. The
circumstance of his singular flush confirmed this declaration; but in a
region where repasts are developed on the line of thirty or forty dishes
and last four hours, the chevalier's stomach would seem to have been a
blessing bestowed by Providence on the good town of Alencon. According
to certain doctors, heat on the left side denotes a prodigal heart.
The chevalier's gallantries confirmed this scientific assertion, the
responsibility for which does not rest, fortunately, on the historian.

In spite of these symptoms, Monsieur de Valois' constitution was
vigorous, consequently long-lived. If his liver "heated," to use an
old-fashioned word, his heart was not less inflammable. His face was
wrinkled and his hair silvered; but an intelligent observer would have
recognized at once the stigmata of passion and the furrows of pleasure
which appeared in the crow's-feet and the marches-du-palais, so prized
at the court of Cythera. Everything about this dainty chevalier bespoke
the "ladies' man." He was so minute in his ablutions that his cheeks
were a pleasure to look upon; they seemed to have been laved in some
miraculous water. The part of his skull which his hair refused to cover
shone like ivory. His eyebrows, like his hair, affected youth by the
care and regularity with which they were combed. His skin, already
white, seemed to have been extra-whitened by some secret compound.
Without using perfumes, the chevalier exhaled a certain fragrance of
youth, that refreshed the atmosphere. His hands, which were those of
a gentleman, and were cared for like the hands of a pretty woman,
attracted the eye to their rosy, well-shaped nails. In short, had it not
been for his magisterial and stupendous nose, the chevalier might have
been thought a trifle too dainty.

We must here compel ourselves to spoil this portrait by the avowal of a
littleness. The chevalier put cotton in his ears, and wore, appended to
them, two little ear-rings representing negroes' heads in diamonds, of
admirable workmanship. He clung to these singular appendages, explaining
that since his ears had been bored he had ceased to have headaches (he
had had headaches). We do not present the chevalier as an accomplished
man; but surely we can pardon, in an old celibate whose heart sends
so much blood to his left cheek, these adorable qualities, founded,
perhaps, on some s