At first glance you would say that gall, not blood, flowed in his veins.
The other was so opposed to the short-legged one that he seemed a heron on its stilts. The likeness to the bird was the closer from his head being lost between his humped shoulders so as to be distinguished solely by the eyes, like blood-spots, and a long, pointed, beak-like nose. Like the heron, too, he seemed to have the ability to stretch his neck, and put out the eyes of one at a distance. His arms also were gifted with this elasticity, and while seated, he might pick up a handkerchief dropped at his feet without moving his body.
The third person was ambiguous; it being difficult to divine the sex. If a man, he was upwards of thirty-four, wearing a stylish costume of the fishmarket stallkeepers, with lace kerchief and tucker, and gold earrings and chain. His features, as well as could be made out through layers of rouge and flake white, together with beauty-patches of sticking plaster of all fancy shapes, were slightly softened as in degenerated races. As soon as one caught sight of him one wanted to hear him speak in the hope that the voice’s sound would give his dubious appearance a stamp by which he could be classed. But it was nothing to the purpose: his soprano voice left the curious observer still deeper plunged into doubt.
The shoes and stockings of the trio were daubed in mud to show that they had been tramping in the road for some time.
“Lord save us, I seem to know that woman, from having met her before,” said Gamain.
“Very likely at court,” sneered the pretended workman “their manners have been there quite a while and they have been visitors, the fishmarket dames, of late. But,” he went on, pulling his cap down on his brow and taking up his gun, “they are here on business: consequently, we had better leave them alone.”
“Do you know them?”
“By sight. Do you?”
“I say that I have met the woman before: tell me who the men are and I may put my finger on her name.”
“Of the two men, the knock-kneed one is the surgeon, Jean Paul Marat; while the humpback is Prosper Verrieres.”