“Do not be surprised” (Mr. Lanfray wrote) “if you get a strange note from a very eccentric Italian, one Professor Tizzi, formerly of the University of Padua.  I have known him for some years.  Scientific inquiry is his monomania, and vanity his ruling passion.  He has written a book on the principle of life, which nobody but himself will ever read; but which he is determined to publish, with his own portrait for frontispiece.  If it is worth your while to accept the little he can offer you, take it by all means, for he is a character worth knowing.  He was exiled, I should tell you, years ago, for some absurd political reason, and has lived in England ever since.  All the money he inherits from his father, who was a mail contractor in the north of Italy, goes in books and experiments; but I think I can answer for his solvency, at any rate, for the large sum of five pounds.  If you are not very much occupied just now, go and see him.  He is sure to amuse you.”

Professor Tizzi lived in the northern suburb of London.  On approaching his house, I found it, so far as outward appearance went, excessively dirty and neglected, but in no other respect different from the “villas” in its neighborhood.  The front garden door, after I had rang twice, was opened by a yellow-faced, suspicious old foreigner, dressed in worn-out clothes, and completely and consistently dirty all over, from top to toe.  On mentioning my name and business, this old man led me across a weedy, neglected garden, and admitted me into the house.  At the first step into the passage, I was surrounded by books.  Closely packed in plain wooden shelves, they ran all along the wall on either side to the back of the house; and when I looked up at the carpetless staircase, I saw nothing but books again, running all the way up the wall, as far as my eye could reach.  “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.