Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/130

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110
FRENCH AFFAIRS.

Only that Perier, when he is long silent and listens to others with considerateness, contracts deeply his thin lips, causing his mouth to look like a hollow in his face. Then he has a habit of nodding his listening and bowed head like one who seems to say, "Das wird sich schon geben,"—"All that will be arranged." His forehead is high, and seems to be the more so because the front is covered with very little hair, which is grey or nearly white, lying smoothly and sparsely covering the rest of his head, the arch of which is beautiful and symmetrical, and in which the little ears may almost be called winsome and graceful,[1] but the chin is short and commonplace. The black thickets of his eyebrows hang wild and waste down to the deep hollows in which the small dark eyes, far hidden, lie in ambush, now and then flashing out like a stiletto. The complexion is yellowish-grey—the common colour of care and weary woe—and all kinds of strange wrinkles stray about in it, which are not vulgar nor yet noble—perhaps intermediate—highly respectable, peevish, juste-milieu wrinkles. It is thought that there is something of the banker in


  1. "Woran die kleinen Ohren fast anmuthig genannt werden könnten." These "pleasing ears" are too much for the French, which more prosaically states that "le long de laquelle de petites oreilles se dessinent presque avec grâce."—Translator,