"
I have no doubt that he was right, and that I was prejudiced; but
as I saw the first oily, vinegary, garlicky morsel slide
noiselessly into his mouth, I began to feel rather sick. My hands
were dirty with moving the books, and I asked if I could wash
them before beginning to work at the likeness, as a good excuse
for getting out of the room, while Professor Tizzi was unctuously
disposing of his simple vegetable meal.
The philosopher looked a little astonished at my request, as if
the washing of hands at irregular times and seasons offered a
comparatively new subject of contemplation to him; but he rang a
hand-bell on his table immediately, and told the old servant to
take me up into his bedroom.
The interior of the parlor had astonished me; but a sight of the
bedroom was a new sensation--not of the most agreeable kind. The
couch on which the philosopher sought repose after his labors was
a truckle-bed that would not have fetched half a crown at a sale.
On one side of it dangled from the ceiling a complete male
skeleton, looking like all that was left of a man who might have
hung himself about a century ago, and who had never been
disturbed since the moment of his suicide. On the other side of
the bed stood a long press, in which I observed hideous colored
preparations of the muscular system, and bottles with curious,
twining, thread-like substances inside them, which might have
been remarkable worms or dissections of nerves, scattered
amicably side by side with the Professor's hair-brush (three
parts worn out), with remnants of his beard on bits of
shaving-paper, with a broken shoe-horn, and with a traveling
looking-glass of the sort usually sold at sixpence apiece.
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