He never engaged a servant, nor dealt with a tradesman, whose physiognomy had not been examined by him.  In his travels he preferred the worst accommodation in a house where he approved of the countenance of the host, to the best where the traits or lines of the landlord’s face were irregular, or did not coincide with his ideas of physiognomical propriety.  The cut of a face, its expression, the length of the nose, the width or smallness of the mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the ears, the colour or thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout ensemble of the head, were always minutely considered and discussed before he entered into any agreement, on any subject, with any individual whatever.  Whatever recommendations, or whatever attestations were produced, if they did not correspond with his own physiognomical remarks and calculations, they were disregarded; while a person whose physiognomy pleased him required no other introduction to obtain his confidence.  Whether he thought himself wiser than his forefathers, he certainly did not grow richer than they were.  Charlatans who imposed upon his credulity and impostors who flattered his mania, servants who robbed him and mistresses who deceived him, proved that if his knowledge of physiognomy was great, it was by no means infallible.  At his death, of the fortune left him by his parents only the half remained.

His friends often amused themselves at the expense of his foibles.  When he prepared for a journey to the East, one of them recommended him a servant, upon whose fidelity he could depend.  After examining with minute scrupulosity the head of the person, he wrote:  “My friend, I accept your valuable present.  From calculations, which never deceive me, Manville (the servant’s name) possesses, with the fidelity of a dog, the intrepidity of the lion.  Chastity itself is painted on his front, modesty in his looks, temperance on his cheek, and his mouth and nose bespeak honesty itself.”  Shortly after the Count had landed at Pondicherry, Mauville, who was a girl, died, in a condition which showed that chastity had not been the divinity to whom she had chiefly sacrificed.  In her trunk were found several trinkets belonging to her master, which she honestly had appropriated to herself.  His miscalculation on this subject the Count could not but avow; he added, however, that it was the entire fault of his friend, who had duped him with regard to the sex.

Madame de C——­n was, on account of her physiognomy, purchased by her late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc.  On his return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France in 1796, where her husband’s name was upon the list of emigrants, though he had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution.