A phrenologist would have observed attentively those embrowned and weather-beaten countenances, those flat or narrow foreheads, those cruel or crafty looks, the wicked or stupid mouth, the enormous neck,--they nearly all presented frightful resemblances to brutes. In the cunning looks of one was seen the perfidious subtlety of the fox, in another was the sanguinary rapacity of the bird of prey, in a third, the ferocity of a tiger; and, in all, the animal stupidity of the brute. We will sketch one or two of the most striking physiognomies in the Fosse aux Lions. Whilst the turnkey was watching his charge, a sort of council was being held in the day-room. Amongst the prisoners there assembled were Barbillon and Nicholas Martial. The prisoner who appeared to preside and lead in this debate was a scoundrel called the Skeleton, whose name has been often mentioned by the Martial family in the Isle du Ravageur. The Skeleton was _prevot_, or captain, of the day-room. This fellow was tall and about forty years of age, fully justifying his sinister nickname by a meagreness impossible to describe, but which might almost be termed osteologic. If the countenance of the Skeleton presented more or less analogy with that of the tiger, the vulture, or the fox, the shape of his forehead, receding as it did, his bony, flat, and lengthened jaws, supported by a neck of disproportioned length, instantly reminded you of the conformation of a serpent. Complete baldness increased still more this hideous resemblance, for beneath the corded skin of his forehead, nearly as flat as a reptile's, might be distinguished the smallest protuberances, the smallest sutures of his skull. His beardless face was exactly like old parchment tightly distended over the bones of his face, and only somewhat stretched from the projection of the cheek-bone to the angle of the lower jaw, the working of which was distinctly visible. His eyes, small and lowering, were so deeply imbedded, and the rim of his brow so prominent, that under his yellow brow, when the light fell, were seen two orbits literally filled with shadows; and, a little further on, the eyes seemed to disappear in the depths of these two dark cavities, these two black holes, which gave so sinister an aspect to the skeleton head. His long teeth, whose alveolar projections were to be accurately traced beneath the tanned skin of his bony and flat jaws, were almost continually developed by a habitual sneer.