Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/134

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VIII.

Together with Blandine, the Count had taken with him to Escal Vigor his only servant, the same who had accompanied him at the time of the carriage accident.

Thibaut Landrillon, son of an Ardennes forest guard, was a solid, squat, thick-set man, not badly made. Having passed a long time in barracks he had retained something of the reveller and the libertine, a "breaker of dishes and of hearts," as he used to say, in his jargon of the guard-room. His face was round, his eyes brown and very sharp and lively, having in them a sort of moist expression of lubricity; he had a small nervous nose, like a King Charles pug-dog, thick lips of the hue of red lead, the sign at once of cruelty and sensuality; a slight moustache; reddish cheeks with a menacing look of inflammation about them; small, hairy satyr's ears; hair coarse, like brushwood; his