languages, to adjust his Japanese eyeglasses on his diplomatically curved nose to ogle you for a second.
But did these supernumeraries count, now that you were admitted to the presence of the supreme head of the firm? He had bid you enter in his sonorous voice. He was there before your eyes, this man, solid as a pillar, a pillar maintaining upon its shoulders one of the oldest houses in Antwerp. He has looked you up and down with blue-grey, clear eyes, without impertinence; in a single glance he gauges his man as quickly as he transacts a bit of business on the Exchange; his eyes contain both compass and plummet; he knows what stuff you are made of, and can tell, with the certainty of a touchstone, if you are pure gold or but gold plate.
A terrible man for uneasy consciences, or for speculators, this Daelmans-Deynze! But a judicious friend, an amiable protector and a reliable support for honest people, and you must be one, for he has tendered his large hand heartily, and grasped yours.
His pen behind his ear, his mouth smiling, his face frank and cordial, he listens to you, punctuating your polite phrases with the kind, "Very well, thank you," of a man who knows that one interests oneself only in what concerns one. His health? You inquire as to his health. Could anyone carry fifty-five years more lightly than he? His hair is correctly cut, and divided by an irreproachable part; it is becoming grey, but has not yet deserted his fine head; later on it will be a white aureole, and lend an added attraction to his sympathetic face. His long, dark whiskers, which he keeps fingering mechanically, are beginning to show a few white hairs, but they are very aristocratic-looking as they are. And his forehead; can the slightest wrinkle
