Titian, Vandyke, Valasquez--any of the three would have
paid him to sit to them!
"Accept my humblest excuses, sir," said the old man, speaking
English with a singularly pure accent for a foreigner. "That
absurd book plunged me so deep down in the quagmires of sophistry
and error, Mr. Kerby, that I really could not get to the surface
at once when you came into the room. So you are willing to draw
my likeness for such a small sum as five pounds?" he continued,
rising, and showing me that he wore a long black velvet gown,
instead of the paltry and senseless costume of modern times.
I informed him that five pounds was as much as I generally got
for a drawing.
"It seems little," said the professor; "but if you want fame, I
can make it up to you in that way. There is my great work" (he
pointed to the piles of manuscript), "the portrait of my mind and
the mirror of my learning; put a likeness of my face on the first
page, and posterity will then be thoroughly acquainted with me,
outside and in. Your portrait will be engraved, Mr. Kerby, and
your name shall be inscribed under the print. You shall be
associated, sir, in that way, with a work which will form an
epoch in the history of human science. The Vital Principle--or,
in other words, the essence of that mysterious Something which we
call Life, and which extends down from Man to the feeblest insect
and the smallest plant--has been an unguessed riddle from the
beginning of the world to the present time.
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