II + 

The Physical Appearance of Doctor Heraclius Gloss + 

If it is true, as certain philosophers claim, that there is perfect harmony between the mental and the physical sides of a man and that one can read in the lines of the face the principal traits of a character, then Doctor Heraclius was not created to give the lie to such assertion. He was small, alert and wiry. He had in him something of the rat, the ant and the terrier: that is to say, he was the kind of being which investigates, gnaws, hunts and never tires. Looking at him one could not understand how all the doctrines which he had studied could ever have found their way into so small a head, but one could imagine, on the other hand, that he himself could have burrowed his way into science and lived there nibbling like a rat in a thick book. + 

What was most peculiar about him was the extraordinary thinness of his person; his friend the Dean pretended, perhaps not without reason, that he must have been forgotten for several centuries and pressed side by side with a rose and a violet in the leaves of a folio volume⁠—for he was always very smart and addicted to scent. His face especially was so like a razor blade that the side-pieces of his gold spectacles, jutting far beyond his temples, had the effect of a great yardarm on the mast of a ship. + 

“If he had not been the learned Doctor Heraclius,” the Warden of the Faculty of Balançon declared, “he would certainly have made an excellent knife.” + 

He wore a wig, dressed with care, was never ill, loved animals, did not detest his fellow men and adored roast quails. + 