A more hideous personage cannot be imagined than the coffin-maker. He
was clothed in a suit of rusty black, which made his skeleton limbs look
yet more lean and cadaverous. His head was perfectly bald, and its
yellow skin, divested of any artificial covering, glistened like
polished ivory. His throat was long and scraggy, and supported a head
unrivalled for ugliness. His nose had been broken in his youth, and was
almost compressed flat with his face. His few remaining teeth were
yellow and discoloured with large gaps between them. His eyes were
bright, and set in deep cavernous recesses, and, now that he was more
than half-intoxicated, gleamed with unnatural lustre. The friends by
whom he was surrounded were congenial spirits,--searchers, watchmen,
buriers, apothecaries, and other wretches, who, like himself, rejoiced
in the pestilence, because it was a source of profit to them.
At one corner of the room, with a part-emptied glass before her, and
several articles in her lap, which she hastily pocketed on the entrance
of the doctor, sat the plague-nurse, Mother Malmayns; and Leonard
thought her, if possible, more villainous-looking than her companions.
She was a rough, raw-boned woman, with sandy hair and light brows, a
sallow, freckled complexion, a nose with wide nostrils, and a large,
thick-lipped mouth. She had, moreover, a look of mingled cunning and
ferocity inexpressibly revolting.
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