The old and loyal Breton was now a man of seventy-three; but his
long-continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils
of his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed
upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had
the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the
worn-out grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court
reigned at Guerande.

Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval
face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over
his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a
resemblance to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt,
Mieris, and Gerard Dow so loved to paint, in pictures which need a
microscope to be fully appreciated. His countenance might be said to
be sunken out of sight beneath those innumerable wrinkles, produced by
a life in the open air and by the habit of watching his country in the
full light of the sun from the rising of that luminary to the sinking
of it. Nevertheless, to an observer enough remained of the
imperishable forms of the human face which appealed to the soul, even
though the eye could see no more than a lifeless head. The firm
outline of the face, the shape of the brow, the solemnity of the
lines, the rigidity of the nose, the form of the bony structure which
wounds alone had slightly altered,--all were signs of intrepidity
without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience without
discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without inconstancy. In
him, the Breton granite was made man.

The baron had no longer any teeth. His lips, once red, now violet, and
backed by hard gums only (with which he ate the bread his wife took