Chapter 10
In familiar language people said: “Zephyrin Xirdal?... What an odd fellow!” Truly, both in mind and in body, Zephyrin Xirdal was something out of the ordinary.
Lanky and awkward, his shirt often collarless and always cuffless, his trousers like a corkscrew, his waistcoat minus several of its buttons, the pockets of his huge coat stuffed with a variety of objects, all his clothing, in fine, dingy and dirty, and made up out of the most incongruous costumes—such was Zephyrin Xirdal’s outer man, and such was the manner in which he understood elegance. From his shoulders, bent and curved like the ceiling of a cellar, hung kilometric arms terminated by enormous hairy hands—dexterous in the extreme—which their owner washed only at very irregular intervals. His face was strikingly ugl
