Viewed from the side of the missing eye, with his three-cornered hat, his sabre and his yellow gloves, the gendarme presented one of the sorriest aspects of human life.

Besides, there is something so essentially grotesque about gendarmes that I cannot help laughing at them; these upholders of the law always produce the same comic effect on me, and so do attorneys for the king, magistrates, and professors of literature.
Tipped to one side, the boat skimmed lightly through the foaming waves.
The three sails were comfortably swelled; the masts creaked and the wind rattled the pulleys.

A cabin-boy stood at the helm singing.

We could not catch the words, but it was some slow, monotonous lay which neither rose nor fell and was repeated again and again, with long-drawn-out inflections and languid refrain.

And it swept softly and sadly out over the ocean, as some confused memory sweeps through one's mind.
The horse stood as straight as it could on its four legs and pulled at a bundle of hay.