master, became the groom, gardener, herdsman, valet, and steward of
the sensual Harpagon. Arsene Rigou, the daughter, married in 1821
without dowry to the prosecuting-attorney, inheriting something of her
mother's rather vulgar beauty, together with the crafty mind of her
father.

Now about sixty-seven years of age, Rigou had never been ill in his
life, and nothing seemed able to lessen his aggressively good health.
Tall, lean, with brown circles round his eyes, the lids of which were
nearly black, any one who saw him of a morning, when as he dressed he
exposed the wrinkled, red, and granulated skin of his neck, would have
compared him to a condor,--all the more because his long nose, sharp
at the tip, increased the likeness by its sanguineous color. His head,
partly bald, would have frightened phrenologists by the shape of its
skull, which was like an ass's backbone, an indication of despotic
will. His grayish eyes, half-covered by filmy, red-veined lids, were
predestined to aid hypocrisy. Two scanty locks of hair of an undecided
color overhung the large ears, which were long and without rim, a sure
sign of cruelty, but cruelty of the moral nature only, unless where it
means actual insanity. The mouth, very broad, with thin lips,
indicated a sturdy eater and a determined drinker by the drop of its
corners, which turned downward like two commas, from which drooled
gravy when he ate and saliva when he talked. Heliogabalus must have
been like this.

His dress, which never varied, consisted of a long blue surtout with a
military collar, a black cravat, with waistcoat and trousers of black
cloth. His shoes, very thick soled, had iron nails outside, and inside
woollen linings knit by his wife in the winter evenings. Annette and
her mistress also knit the master's stockings. Rigou's name was