Yet his path was not an easy one to tread, for over him he had the misfortune to have placed in authority a Chief Clerk who was a graven image of elderly insensibility and inertia.
Always the same, always unapproachable, this functionary could never in his life have smiled or asked civilly after an acquaintance's health.
Nor had any one ever seen him a whit different in the street or at his own home from what he was in the office, or showing the least interest in anything whatever, or getting drunk and relapsing into jollity in his cups, or indulging in that species of wild gaiety which, when intoxicated, even a burglar affects.

No, not a particle of this was there in him.

Nor, for that matter, was there in him a particle of anything at all, whether good or bad: which complete negativeness of character produced rather a strange effect.

In the same way, his wizened, marble-like features reminded one of nothing in particular, so primly proportioned were they.

Only the numerous pockmarks and dimples with which they were pitted placed him among the number of those over whose faces, to quote the popular saying, "The Devil has walked by night to grind peas." In short, it would seem that no human agency could have approached such a man and gained his goodwill.