And he it was, who, although in his outward show he was the more splendid--though he bestrode his steed with an air of pride so manifest, that you might have fancied he bestrode the universe--though he addressed all his inferiors with intolerable haughtiness, and appeared to look upon all his equals as inferiors--yet, by his demeanor toward the youth who reined his Arab courser by his side, and by his almost servile watching of his every motion, and lowering his voice at his every word, appeared to be oppressed in his presence by a sense of the utmost unworthiness, and scarcely to hold himself entitled to have an opinion of his own until sanctioned by that of the young marquis de Roche d’or. The features of this man were certainly well-favored rather than the reverse--for the brow, the eyes, the outlines, were all good; and yet the expressions they assumed, as he was moved by varying passions, were so odious and detestable, that on a nearer view, a close observer would probably have styled him hideous, and avoided his advances. Pride, of the haughtiest and most intolerant form, would at one time writhe his lip and deform his every lineament; at another, it would yield to the basest, the most abject servility. Cruelty alone sat fixed and permanent in the thick, massive, animal jaw, the low and somewhat receding forehead, and the oblique glances of the cold, clear, gray eye; but sensuality, and sneering sarcasm, and utter want of veneration or belief for anything high or holy, had left their hateful traces in the lines about his mouth and nostrils: nor were these odious, ineradicable signs of an atrocious character redeemed by the evident presence of high intellect and pervading talents, for that intellect was of a shrewd, keen, cunning caste, and was in no wise akin to anything of an imaginative, a noble, or a virtuous type. Such was the appearance, such the aspect, of a man renowned in his day far and wide through France, but renowned for evil only. Such was _Canillac le fou_--a soubriquet which he had won throughout his province, for the insane, frantic, and unnatural vice and crime which had marked his whole career from boyhood. Canillac the madman!--and with good reason did the vassals of the old house of Roche d’or shrink upon themselves, and draw instinctively one toward the other, like wild-fowl when they see the shadow of the soaring falcon, with a foreboding of peril near at hand, when they beheld this fierce, voluptuous, pitiless monster--whose favorite boast it was that he had never spared a woman in his passion, nor a man in his hatred--riding at the bridle-rein of their young lord, as his chosen friend and companion, and probably as the arbiter of his pleasures, instigator of his vices!