How is Ausable different from other secret agents?
Ausable is distinctly different from the typical secret agents one reads about in fiction. While secret agents are usually imagined as fit, smart, and mysterious figures involved in thrilling adventures, Ausable is very fat and sloppy in appearance.
Furthermore, unlike sophisticated spies, he speaks with an American accent that he never lost even after living in Paris for twenty years, though he speaks French and German passably.
His life also lacks the usual romanticism of espionage. Rather than receiving secret messages from dark-eyed beauties, he only gets a prosaic telephone call, and he lives in a small, gloomy room in a French hotel, which is scarcely a setting for a romantic adventure.
Explanation
The textbook explicitly contrasts Ausable with the conventional image of a secret agent. Fowler expects a romantic, mysterious figure but finds a fat, sloppy man with an American accent. The text highlights his prosaic, dull surroundings and routine (a simple phone call instead of dark-eyed beauties slipping messages) to emphasize how he subverts the typical spy trope.