His complexion was that of the south--rich, sunny olive, without a tinge of color in the clear, dark cheek; his hair black as the raven’s wing, and his eyes of that wild, fiery shade of black which perhaps indicates a taint of Moorish blood. His features were very regular, and very calm in their regularity, though there was nothing pensive nor anything very grave in their expression. It was the calmness of latent passions, not the calmness of controlling principles--the stillness which precedes the thunderburst, not the stillness of the subsident and overmastered storm: for the firmly-compressed lips, the square outlines of the hard, massive jaw, the immense muscular development of the neck, and the deeply-indented frown between the eyebrows, intersecting a furrow crossing the forehead from brow to brow, would have indicated at once to the physiognomist that Maurice Champrèst was a man of the fiercest and most fiery energy and passions, concealed but not controlled--existing perhaps unsuspected, but utterly unchecked by any principle--and certain to start into a blaze at the first spark that should enkindle them. His dress was the usual attire of a man in his station at the period, though of finer materials than was ordinary, consisting of a dark forest-green gambison, or short tunic of fine cloth, not very different in form from the blouse of the modern Frenchman, gathered about his waist by a broad belt of black leather, fastened in front by a brazen buckle, and supporting on one side a heavy, buckhorn-hilted wood-knife, and on the other a large pouch or purse of black cordovan, bound with silver; his hose were of the same color with the tunic, fitting close to the shapely thigh, and above these he wore long boots of russet-tawny leather. His black hair fell in two heavy clubs or masses over each ear, nearly to the collar of his doublet, from beneath the cover of a small cap of black velvet, set jauntily on one side, and adorned with a single white-cock’s feather. His appearance on the whole, though he was very far inferior in regard of personal beauty to the exquisite creature whom he was so soon to call his wife, was manly and imposing; while the character of his dress and equipments, as well as the decorations of Marguerite and her attendant maidens, showed at once that they were all of a quality and station to the serfs employed in the cultivation of the lands of the great seigneurs, and indeed to that of the ordinary armed vassals and feudal tenants of the day.