Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

The following passage is excerpted from a short story first published in 1878. The passage is set in France in 1429. Denis has entered a stranger’s house to avoid detection by approaching soldiers.

He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were three doors; one on each of three sides; all similarly curtained with tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits. Denis recognized the bearings1, and was gratified to find himself in such good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two, the hearth was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes2 clearly many days old.

On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet.3 He sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strongly masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling, something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint’s, and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the tapered, sensual fingers, were like those of one of Leonardo’s women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin martyr—that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god’s statue. His quiescence4 seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks.

Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit.

Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two.

“Pray step in,” said the Sire de Malétroit. “I have been expecting you all the evening.”

In the first three sentences of the passage (“He found . . . Malétroits”), the details Denis observes upon entering the Sire de Malétroit’s residence combine to create a sense of
luxury appropriate to Malétroit’s privileged class

luxury appropriate to Malétroit’s privileged class
A

barrenness to spotlight Malétroit himself

barrenness to spotlight Malétroit himself
B

darkness as a metaphor for Malétroit’s personality

darkness as a metaphor for Malétroit’s personality
C

strangeness akin to Denis’ own discomfort

strangeness akin to Denis’ own discomfort
D

poverty at odds with the family coat of arms