This time the student saw whose voice it was had stayed Grio's arm.

Within the door a pace in front of two or three attendants, who had displaced the roisterers on the threshold, appeared a spare dry-looking man of middle height, wearing his hat, and displaying a gold chain of office across the breast of his black velvet cloak.

In age about sixty, he had nothing that at a first glance seemed to call for a second: his small pinched features, and the downward curl of the lip, which his moustache and clipped beard failed to hide, indicated a nature peevish and severe rather than powerful.

On nearer observation the restless eyes, keen and piercing, asserted themselves and redeemed the face from insignificance.

When, as on this occasion, their glances were supported by the terrors of the State, it was not difficult to understand why Messer Blondel, the Syndic, though no great man to look upon, had both weight with the masses, and a hold not to be denied over his colleagues in the Council.
No one took on himself to answer the question he had put, and in a voice thin and querulous, but with a lurking venom in its tone, "What is this ?" the great man repeated, looking from one to another.