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| Agile as a monkey. | 1 |
| Black as ebony. | 2 |
| Brilliant as a mirror. | 3 |
| Buried, like Topeca beneath the bucklers of Sabines. | 4 |
| Calm as a mirror. | 5 |
| Calm as a virgin who has never told a lie. | 6 |
| Cheeks pearly as those of Pallas of Virgil. | 7 |
| Cleaving it like a ploughshare. | 8 |
| Confusion of voices, like the chirping of young birds when the brood is just hatched under the down. | 9 |
| Courtiers are, with regard to court rumours, like old soldiers who distinguish through blasts of wind and moaning of leaves the sound of distant steps of an armed troop. | 10 |
| Darkened, like the earth on a splendid day when a cloud flits across the sun. | 11 |
| Darted like a serpent. | 12 |
| Differ as a breastplate and a piecrust. | 13 |
| Disappeared, like a cloud driven by the wind. | 14 |
| Drooping like plumes. | 15 |
| Dropped like a flower cut down by the sickle. | 16 |
| Duped, like a monkey cheated out of an empty nutshell. | 17 |
| Eyes like live coals. | 18 |
| Jussaic fell like a mass of dead flesh. | 19 |
| Eyes immovably fixed … like a miser torn away from his coffers, or like a mother separated from her child about to be led away to death. | 20 |
| Fleshless as bars of steel. | 21 |
| Furious … like a wounded bull in an arena. | 22 |
| Gay as a chaffinch. | 23 |
| Glance like lightning. | 24 |
| Glittered like fish from the sweep-net. | 25 |
| Growls, roars and breaks itself, like our eternal and powerless despair. | 26 |
| A woman’s heart is as intricate as a ravelled skein of silk. | 27 |
| Heaved like the surface of the sea. | 28 |
| Hospitable as an old Siracusan. | 29 |
| Inoffensive as the stone with which, at play, a boy makes ducks and drakes. | 30 |
| Intercede like an angel of mercy. | 31 |
| Laugh on one side, like the masks of the ancients. | 32 |
| Lively as a chaffinch. | 33 |
| Mean as an earth-worm. | 34 |
| Motionless, like one who sees but does not understand. | 35 |
| As mute as the tomb. | 36 |
| Naked as a worm. | 37 |
| Overwhelmed, like the miner upon whom a roof has just fallen. | 38 |
| Pale as a ghost. | 39 |
| Pale as a sheet. | 40 |
| Mouth parched like a shade that comes to salute friends of former days. | 41 |
| Passed like a meteor. | 42 |
| Patient as a god. | 43 |
| Pervading his frame like a raging fever. | 44 |
| Kings will lose their privilege, as stars which have completed their time lose their splendor. | 45 |
| Proud as Gascon. | 46 |
| Restless, like a dog whose master is absent. | 47 |
| Retreated … like a panther which draws back to take its spring. | 48 |
| Riddled with thrusts like a sieve. | 49 |
| State secrets are like mortal poison: as long as that poison is in its box and the box closed, it is not injurious; out of the box, it kills. | 50 |
| Serious as a doctor. | 51 |
| Head shaking like one of those drunken satyrs in the pictures of Rubens. | 52 |
| Profound sigh, like a man unloosed from the tightest bonds. | 53 |
| Soft and caressing as a melody. | 54 |
| Starting as at the sight of an enemy. | 55 |
| Stiff as the corpse of a hanged man. | 56 |
| Stooped, like a bird with a broken wing. | 57 |
| Sure as the gospel. | 58 |
| Trembling like a little child. | 59 |
| Undulating, like the mane of a lion. | 60 |
| Hands … white, as if the blood began to chill there. | 61 |
| As white as teeth of twenty-five years old. | 62 |
| Wide-awake as mice. | 63 |
| Withers like debauchery. | 64 |
| Yelling like a maniac. | 65 |
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