The Complete Short Stories of Wilkie Collins. Уилки Коллинз

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. I alone have found the answer; and here it is!” He fixed his dazzling eyes on me in triumph, and smacked the piles of manuscript fiercely with both his sallow hands.

      I saw that he was waiting for me to say something; so I asked if his great work had not cost a vast expenditure of time and pains.

      “I am seventy, sir,” said the Professor; “and I began preparing myself for that book at twenty. After mature consideration, I have written it in English (having three other foreign languages at my fingers’ ends), as a substantial proof of my gratitude to the nation that has given me an asylum. Perhaps you think the work looks rather long in its manuscript state? It will occupy twelve volumes, sir, and it is not half long enough, even then, for the subject. I take two volumes (and no man could do it in less) to examine the theories of all the philosophers in the world, ancient and modern, on the Vital Principle. I take two more (and little enough) to scatter every one of the theories, seriatim, to the winds. I take two more (at the risk, for brevity’s sake, of doing things by halves) to explain the exact stuff, or vital compound, 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 prizefighter 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 handbell 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 labours 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 coloured 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 hairbrush (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. Repetitions of the litter of books in the parlor lay all about over the floor; coloured anatomical prints were nailed anyhow against the walls; rolled-up towels were scattered here, there, and everywhere in the wildest confusion, as if the room had been bombarded with them; and last, but by no means least remarkable among the other extraordinary objects in the bedchamber, the stuffed figure of a large unshaven poodle-dog, stood on an old card-table, keeping perpetual watch over a pair of the philosopher’s black breeches twisted round his forepaws.

      I had started, on entering the room, at the skeleton, and I started once more at the dog. The old servant noticed me each time with a sardonic grin. “Don’t be afraid,” he said; “one is as dead as the other.” With these words, he left me to wash my hands.

      Finding little more than a pint of water at my disposal, and failing altogether to discover where the soap was kept, I was not long in performing my ablutions. Before leaving the room, I looked again at the stuffed poodle. On the board to which he was fixed, I saw painted in faded letters the word “Scarammuccia,” evidently the comic Italian name to which he had answered in his lifetime. There was no other inscription; but I made up my mind that the dog must have been the Professor’s pet, and that he kept the animal stuffed in his bedroom as a remembrance of past times. “Who would have suspected so great a philosopher of having so much heart!” thought I, leaving the bedroom to go downstairs again.

      The Professor had done his breakfast, and was anxious to begin the sitting; so I took out my chalks and paper, and set to work at once — I seated on one pile of books and he on another.

      “Fine anatomical preparations in my room, are there not, Mr. Kerby?” said the old gentleman. “Did you notice a very interesting and perfect arrangement of the intestinal ganglia? They form the subject of an important chapter in my great work.”

      “I am afraid you will think me very ignorant,” I replied. “But I really do not know the intestinal ganglia when I see them. The object I noticed with most curiosity in your room was something more on a level with my own small capacity.”

      “And what was that?” asked the Professor.

      “The figure of the stuffed poodle. I suppose he was a favorite of yours?”

      “Of mine? No, no; a young woman’s favorite, sir, before I was born; and a very remarkable dog, too. The vital principle in that poodle, Mr. Kerby, must have been singularly intensified. He lived to a fabulous old age, and he was clever enough to play an important part of his own in what you English call a Romance of Real Life! If I could only have dissected that poodle, I would have put him into my book; he should have headed my chapter on the Vital Principle of Beasts.”

      “Here is a story in prospect,” thought I, “if I can only keep his attention up to the subject.”

      “He should have figured in my great work, sir,” the Professor went on. “Scarammuccia should have taken his place among the examples that prove my new theory; but unfortunately he died before I was born. His mistress gave him, stuffed, as you see upstairs, to my father to take care of for her, and he has descended as an heirloom to me. Talking of dogs, Mr. Kerby, I have ascertained, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the brachial plexus in people who die of hydrophobia — but stop! I had better show you how it is — the preparation СКАЧАТЬ