These favorites of the Prince, each
wearing full-brimmed, three-cornered hats, very flat and very
wide-spreading, beneath which grinned their swarthy, tanned, and
wrinkled faces, lighted by three pairs of twinkling eyes, were
noticeably lean, sinewy, and vigorous, like men in whom sport had
become a passion. All three were supplied with immense horns of
Dampierre, wound with green worsted cords, leaving only the brass
tubes visible; but they controlled their dogs by the eye and voice.
Those noble animals were far more faithful and submissive subjects
than the human lieges whom the king was at that moment addressing;
all were marked with white, black, or liver spots, each having as
distinctive a countenance as the soldiers of Napoleon, their eyes
flashing like diamonds at the slightest noise. One of them, brought
from Poitou, was short in the back, deep in the shoulder, low-jointed,
and lop-eared; the other, from England, white, fine as a greyhound
with no belly, small ears, and built for running. Both were young,
impatient, and yelping eagerly, while the old hounds, on the contrary,
covered with scars, lay quietly with their heads on their forepaws,
and their ears to the earth like savages.
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