the widow attendant to the heir

He had swung round his revolving chair so as to face me, and he sat all puffed out like an enormous bull-frog, his head laid back and his eyes half-covered by supercilious lids.

There is no point whatever in going on with this discussion.

[…] all the metamorphosic fables of the Ancients turning policied and commercial people into horrid and savage monsters, will, like clouds before the sun, dispel and evaporate before the light of truth.