To judge of his station by his dress, one would have concluded him to be some Spanish merchant of no very large fortune; but his person and his air told a different tale. Pale, and even rather sallow in complexion, the high broad forehead, rising almost upright from his brow, and seen still higher through the floating curls of his dark hair, the straight, finely turned nose, the small mouth curled with a sort of smile, strangely mingled of various expressions, half cynical, half bland, the full rounded chin, the very turn of his head and neck, as he sat writing at a table exactly opposite the door, all gave that nobility to his aspect, which was not to be mistaken. On our entrance, the stranger rose, and in answer to my mother's inquiry for the procureur, replied, "Arnault is not at present here; but if the Countess de Bigorre will sit down, he shall attend her immediately," and taking up the letter he had been writing, he left the apartment. The moment after, the door by which he had gone out again opened, and Jean Baptiste Arnault entered the room, at once verifying by his appearance everything we had heard of his person. He was quite a dwarf in stature; and, in size at least, dame Nature had certainly very much favoured his head, at the expense of the rest of his body. His face, to my youthful eyes, appeared at least two feet square, with all the features in proportion, except the eyes, which were peculiarly small and black; and not being very regularly set in his head, seemed like two small boats, nearly lost in the vast ocean of countenance which lay before us. I do not precisely remember the particulars of the conversation which took place upon his coming in, but I very well recollect laughing most amazingly at his appearance, in spite of my mother's reproof, and telling him, with the unceremonious candour of a spoiled child, that he was certainly the ugliest man I had ever seen. He affected to take my boldness in very good part, and called me a fine frank boy; but there was a vindictive gleam in his little black eyes, which contradicted his words; and I have since had reason to believe that he never forgot or forgave my childish rudeness. It is a very general rule, that a man is personally vain in proportion to his ugliness, and hates the truth in the same degree that he deceives himself. Certain it is, no man was ever more ugly, or ever more vain; and his conceit had not been nourished a little by marrying a very handsome woman.