His splendid conduct while flag-captain to Admiral
Kergarouet was written in visible letters on his scarred face. To see
him now no one would have imagined the voice that ruled the storm, the
eye that compassed the sea, the courage, indomitable, of the Breton
sailor.
The chevalier never smoked, never swore; he was gentle and tranquil as
a girl, as much concerned about his little dog Thisbe and her caprices
as though he were an elderly dowager. In this way he gave a high idea
of his departed gallantry, but he never so much as alluded to the
deeds of surpassing bravery which had astonished the doughty old
admiral, Comte d'Estaing. Though his manner was that of an invalid,
and he walked as if stepping on eggs and complained about the
sharpness of the wind or the heat of the sun, or the dampness of the
misty atmosphere, he exhibited a set of the whitest teeth in the
reddest of gums,--a fact reassuring as to his maladies, which were,
however, rather expensive, consisting as they did of four daily meals
of monastic amplitude. His bodily frame, like that of the baron, was
bony, and indestructibly strong, and covered with a parchment glued to
his bones as the skin of an Arab horse on the muscles which shine in
the sun.
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