The animal was lean and tall, and had a moth-eaten mane, rough hoofs and
loose shoes; a seton bobbed up and down on its breast. Lost in a saddle
that swallowed him up, supported at the back by a valise and in front by
the mail-bag, which was passed through the saddle-bow, its rider sat
huddled on it like a monkey. His small face, adorned with straggling
blond whiskers and as wrinkled and rough as a winter apple, was hidden
by a large oil-cloth hat lined with felt; a sort of gray coutil coat was
drawn up to his hips and bagged around his stomach, while his trousers
stopped at the knees and disclosed his bare legs reddened by the rubbing
of the stirrup-straps, and his blue hose, which hung over his shoes. The
harness was held together with strings, the rider's clothes had been
mended with threads of different colours; all sorts of patches and all
kinds of spots, torn linen, greasy leather, dried mud, recent dust,
hanging straps, bright rags, a dirty man and a mangy horse, the former
sickly and perspiring, the latter consumptive and almost spent; the one
with his whip and the other with its bells--all this formed but one
object which had the same colour and movement and executed almost the
same gestures, which served the same purpose, the conducting of the
Auray post.
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