Jacques Bastien, as we have said, was an obese Hercules; his large head, covered with a forest of reddish blond curls, was joined close to his broad shoulders by the neck of a bull; his face was large, florid, and almost beardless, as is frequently the case in athletic physiques; his nose big, his lips of the kind called blubber, and his eye at the same time shrewd, wicked, and deceitful. The blue blouse, which, according to his custom, he wore over his riding-coat, distinctly delineated the prominence of his Falstaff-like stomach; he wore a little cap of fox hair, with ear-protectors, trousers of cheap velvet, and iron-tipped boots that had not been cleaned for several days; in one of his short, yet enormous hands, broader than they were long, he carried a stick of holly-wood, fastened to his wrist by a greasy leather string; and if the truth must be told, this man, a sort of mastodon, at ten paces distant, smelled like a goat.
His boon companion, Bridou, also clad in a blouse over his old black coat, and wearing a round hat, was a small man, with spectacles, lank, covered with freckles, with a cunning, sly expression, pinched mouth, and high cheek-bones: one might have taken him for a ferret wearing eyeglasses.
At the sight of Jacques Bastien, David shuddered with pain and apprehension, as he thought that Marie's life was for ever linked to the life of this man, who even lacked the generosity of remaining absent from the unhappy woman.
Jacques Bastien and Bridou entered the library without salutation; the first words that the master of the domicile, with an angry frown and rude voice, addressed to his wife, who rose to receive him, were these:
"Who gave the order to fell my fir-trees?"
"What fir-trees, monsieur?" asked Marie, without knowing what she said, so much was she upset by her husband's arrival.
"How, what fir-trees?" replied Jacques Bastien. "What but my fir-trees on the road? Do I speak enigmas? In passing along the road I have just seen that more than a thousand of the finest trees on the border of the plantation have been cut down! I ask you who has allowed them to be sold without my order?"
"They have not been sold, monsieur," replied Marie, regaining her self-possession.
"If they have not been sold, why were they cut down? Who ordered them cut down?"
"I did, monsieur."