"Here is the
Artist Painter!" cried the old servant, throwing open one of the
parlor doors, before I had half done looking at the books, and
signing impatiently to me to walk into the room.
Books again! all round the walls, and all over the floor--among
them a plain deal table, with leaves of manuscript piled high on
every part of it--among the leaves a head of long, elfish white
hair covered with a black skull-cap, and bent down over a
book--above the head a sallow, withered hand shaking itself at me
as a sign that I must not venture to speak just at that
moment--on the tops of the bookcases glass vases full of spirits
of some kind, with horrible objects floating in the liquid--dirt
on the window panes, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, dust
springing up in clouds under my intruding feet. These were the
things I observed on first entering the study of Professor Tizzi.
After I had waited for a minute or so, the shaking hand stopped,
descended with a smack on the nearest pile of manuscript, seized
the book that the head had been bending over, and flung it
contemptuously to the other end of the room. "I've refuted _you,_
at any rate!" said Professor Tizzi, looking with extreme
complacency at the cloud of dust raised by the fall of the
rejected volume.
He turned next to me. What a grand face it was! What a broad,
white forehead---what fiercely brilliant black eyes--what perfect
regularity and refinement in the other features; with the long,
venerable hair, framing them in, as it were, on either side! Poor
as I was, I felt that I could have painted his portrait for
nothing.
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