But the eyelids were closed without contraction, and the sockets much less hollow than one could have expected; the mouth was not at all distorted like the mouth of a corpse; the skin was slightly wrinkled but had not changed color; it had only become a little more transparent, showing, after a fashion, the color of the tendons, the fat and the muscles, wherever it rested directly upon them.

It also had a rosy tint which is not ordinarily seen in embalmed corpses.

Doctor Martout explained this anomaly by saying that if the colonel had actually been dried alive, the globules of the blood were not decomposed, but simply collected in the capillary vessels of the skin and subjacent tissues where they still preserved their proper color, and could be seen more easily than otherwise, on account of the semi-transparency of the skin.
The uniform had become much too large, as may be readily understood; though it did not seem, at a casual glance, that the members had become deformed.

The hands were dry and angular, but the nails, although a little bent inward toward the root, had preserved all their freshness.
The only very noticeable change was the excessive depression of the abdominal walls, which seemed crowded downward toward the posterior side; at the right, a slight elevation indicated the place of the liver.
A tap of the finger on the various parts of the body, produced a sound like that from dry leather.

While Leon was pointing out these details to his audience and doing the honors of his mummy he awkwardly broke off the lower part of the right ear, and a little piece of the Colonel remained in his hand.
This trifling accident might have passed unnoticed, had not Clementine, who followed with visible emotion all the movements of her lover, dropped her candle and uttered a cry of affright.