He had the arms of Hercules, hands worthy of Domitian, a stomach which sobriety held within the limits of the majestic, to use a saying of Brillaet-Savarin.

His face was a good deal like that of the Emperor Alexander.

The Tartar type was in the little eyes and the flattened nose turned slightly up, in the frigid lips and the short chin.

The forehead was low and narrow.

Though his temperament was lymphatic, the devout Isidore was under the influence of a conjugal passion which time did not lessen.
In spite, however, of his resemblance to the handsome Russian Emperor and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department, a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut deep enough to let the operator see into him.