of which the first man and woman in the world were made—­calling them Adam and Eve, out of deference to popular prejudices.  I take two more—­but you are standing all this time, Mr. Kerby; and I am talking instead of sitting for my portrait.  Pray take any books you want, anywhere off the floor, and make a seat of any height you please.  Furniture would only be in my way here, so I don’t trouble myself with anything of the kind.”

I obediently followed the Professor’s directions, and had just heaped up a pile of grimy quartos, when the old servant entered the room with a shabby little tray in his hand.  In the middle of the tray I saw a crust of bread and a bit of garlic, encircled by a glass of water, a knife, salt, pepper, a bottle of vinegar, and a flask of oil.

“With your permission, I am going to breakfast,” said Professor Tizzi, as the tray was set down before him on the part of his great work relating to the vital compound of Adam and Eve.  As he spoke, he took up the piece of bread, and rubbed the crusty part of it with the bit of garlic, till it looked as polished as a new dining-table.  That done, he turned the bread, crumb uppermost, and saturated it with oil, added a few drops of vinegar, sprinkled with pepper and salt, and, with a gleam of something very like greediness in his bright eyes, took up the knife to cut himself a first mouthful of the horrible mess that he had just concocted.  “The best of breakfasts,” said the Professor, seeing me look amazed.  “Not a cannibal meal of chicken-life in embryo (vulgarly called an egg); not a dog’s gorge of a dead animal’s flesh, blood and bones, warmed with fire (popularly known as a chop); not a breakfast, sir, that lions, tigers, Caribbees, and costermongers could all partake of alike; but an innocent, nutritive, simple, vegetable meal; a philosopher’s refection, a breakfast that a prize-fighter would turn from in disgust, and that a Plato would share with relish.”

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.