The Complete Short Stories of Wilkie Collins. Уилки Коллинз

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      Prologue to the Sixth Story

       Table of Contents

      On the last occasion when I made a lengthened stay in London, my wife and I were surprised and amused one morning by the receipt of the following note, addressed to me in a small, crabbed, foreign-looking handwriting.

      “Professor Tizzi presents amiable compliments to Mr. Kerby, the artist, and is desirous of having his portrait done, to be engraved from, and placed at the beginning of the voluminous work on ‘The Vital Principle; or, Invisible Essence of Life,’ which the Professor is now preparing for the press — and posterity.

      “The Professor will give five pounds; and will look upon his face with satisfaction, as an object perpetuated for public contemplation at a reasonable rate, if Mr. Kerby will accept the sum just mentioned.

      “In regard to the Professor’s ability to pay five pounds, as well as to offer them, if Mr. Kerby should, from ignorance, entertain injurious doubts, he is requested to apply to the Professor’s honourable friend, Mr. Lanfray, of Rockleigh Place.”

      But for the reference at the end of this strange note, I should certainly have considered it as a mere trap set to make a fool of me by some mischievous friend. As it was, I rather doubted the propriety of taking any serious notice of Professor Tizzi’s offer; and I might probably have ended by putting the letter in the fire without further thought about it, but for the arrival by the next post of a note from Mr. Lanfray, which solved all my doubts, and sent me away at once to make the acquaintance of the learned discoverer of the Essence of Life.

      “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 neighbourhood. The front garden door, after I had rang twice, was opened by a yellow-faced, suspicious old foreigner, dressed in wornout 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.

      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. 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 СКАЧАТЬ