brief instants recalled features precisely similar and for ever
engraved on his memory,--the eyes shining with the colour and brilliancy
of the _aqua marina_ beneath their bushy sandy eyebrows, the livid
complexion, the nose thin, projecting, and curving like an eagle's beak,
with its nostrils so curiously expanded and carved out till they exposed
a portion of the nasal cartilage, resembled closely a certain Polidori,
whose name had been so unceremoniously committed by Murphy, in his
conversation with Grauen, to regions not mentionable to polite ears.
Though Rodolph had not seen Polidori during the last sixteen or
seventeen years, he had a thousand reasons for keeping every feature
well in his remembrance. The only thing that told against the identity
of the individual he believed existed under the disguised name of this
quack dentist was the circumstance of his having red hair, while the
Polidori of Rodolph's acquaintance had almost black. That Rodolph
experienced no wonder (always supposing his conjectures as to the
identity correct) at finding a man whose profound learning, rare talent,
and vast intelligence he well knew, sunk to such a degradation,--it
might even be infamy,--was because he knew equally well that all these
high attainments and noble gifts were allied to such entire perversity,
such wild and irregular passions, inclinations so corrupt, and, above
all, an affected scorn and contempt for the opinion of the world, which
might lead this man, when want and misery overtook him, to seek, from
choice, the lowest and least honourable paths of subsistence, and to
enjoy a sort of malevolent satisfaction in the idea of him, the
talented, the learned, burying all these precious treasures beneath the
ignoble calling to which he had devoted his vast powers of mind and
body. Still, be it remembered that, spite of the close resemblance
between the charlatan surgeon-dentist and the Polidori of bygone years,
there still existed discrepancies so great that Rodolph balanced, in
deep uncertainty, respecting their proving to be one and the same
person.

At length, turning to Pipelet, he inquired:

"How long has this M. Bradamanti been an inmate of this house?"

"About a year, sir, as nearly as I can remember,--yes, it is a year; I
recollect he took the lodgings in the January quarter. Oh, he is a very
regular and exact lodger; he cured me of a desperate attack of
rheumatism."

"Madame Pipelet was telling me of the repo