Leaning out so that he was almost prone on one of the timbers, he finally perceived the ringer, clinging with his hands to two iron handles and balancing over the gulf with his eyes turned heavenward.
Durtal was shocked by the face.

Never had he seen such disconcerting pallor.

It was not the waxen hue of the convalescent, not the lifeless grey of the perfume-or snuff-maker, it was a prison pallor of a bloodless lividness unknown today, the ghastly complexion of a wretch of the Middle Ages shut up till death in a damp, airless, pitch-dark _in-pace_.
The eyes were blue, prominent, even bulging, and had the mystic's readiness to tears, but their expression was singularly contradicted by the truculent Kaiser Wilhelm moustache.

The man seemed at once a dreamer and a fighter, and it would have been difficult to tell which character predominated.
He gave the bell stirrup a last yank with his foot and with a heave of his loins regained his equilibrium.

He mopped his brow and smiled down at Des Hermies.
"Well! well!" he said, "you here." He descended, and when he learned Durtal's name his face brightened and the two shook hands cordially.
"We have been expecting you a long time, monsieur.