elderly man, whose nerves are so finely strung that he starts at chance noises, and winces when he sees a house-spaniel get a whipping, went into the stable-yard on the morning after his arrival, and put his hand on the head of a chained bloodhound—­a beast so savage that the very groom who feeds him keeps out of his reach.  His wife and I were present, and I shall not forget the scene that followed, short as it was.

“Mind that dog, sir,” said the groom; “he flies at everybody!” “He does that, my friend,” replied the Count quietly, “because everybody is afraid of him.  Let us see if he flies at me.”  And he laid his plump, yellow-white fingers, on which the canary-birds had been perching ten minutes before, upon the formidable brute’s head, and looked him straight in the eyes.  “You big dogs are all cowards,” he said, addressing the animal contemptuously, with his face and the dog’s within an inch of each other.  “You would kill a poor cat, you infernal coward.  You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal coward.  Anything that you can surprise unawares—­anything that is afraid of your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slobbering, bloodthirsty mouth, is the thing you like to fly at.  You could throttle me at this moment, you mean, miserable bully, and you daren’t so much as look me in the face, because I’m not afraid of you.  Will you think better of it, and try your teeth in my fat neck?  Bah! not you!” He turned away, laughing at the astonishment of the men in the yard, and the dog crept back meekly to his kennel.  “Ah! my nice waistcoat!” he said pathetically.  “I am sorry I came here.  Some of that brute’s slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat.”  Those words express another of his incomprehensible oddities.  He is as fond of fine clothes as the veriest fool in existence, and has appeared in four magnificent waistcoats already—­all of light garish colours, and all immensely large even for him—­in the two days of his residence at Blackwater Park.

His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as the singular inconsistencies in his character, and the childish triviality of his ordinary tastes and pursuits.

I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with all of us during the period of his sojourn in this place.  He has evidently discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him (she confessed as much to me when I pressed her on the subject)—­but he has also found out that she is extravagantly fond of flowers.  Whenever she wants a nosegay he has got one to give her, gathered and arranged by himself, and greatly to my amusement, he is always cunningly provided with a duplicate, composed of exactly the same flowers, grouped in exactly the same way, to appease his icily jealous wife before she can so much as think herself aggrieved.  His management of the Countess (in public) is a sight to see.  He bows to her, he habitually addresses her as “my angel,” he carries his canaries to pay her little visits on his fingers and to sing to her, he kisses her hand when she gives him his cigarettes; he presents her with sugar-plums in return, which he puts into her mouth playfully, from a box in his pocket.  The rod of iron with which he rules her never appears in company—­it is a private rod, and is always kept upstairs.