“Come in here, then,” said the student, as he pulled him into a large room where there were three young men who acted as Knox’s assistants.
And there they were in the midst of a great number of coarse tables, with one large one in the middle, whereon were deposited—each having its portion—masses or lumps of some matter which could not be seen by reason of all of them being covered with pieces of cloth—once white, but now dirty gray, as if they had been soiled with clammy hands for weeks or months. Nor were these signs, though unmistakeable to even the neophyte, all that there spoke with a terrible eloquence of man’s lowly destiny upon earth; ay, and of man’s pride too, even that pride of science which makes such a fool of him in the very midst of the evidences of his corruption; for although the windows were opened a little way, the choking air, thick with gases which, in other circumstances, the free wind carries off to dissipate and purify in the storm, pressed heavily upon the lungs, so that even the uninitiated shrank with unfeigned feeling, as if he shuddered under an awe that was perfectly foreign to his rough nature.
“Sure, and I’m among the dead,” said the man, whom the reader will have discovered to be an Irishman; “and I have something ov that kind to——”
“Sell,” added one assistant sharply, as, in his scientific ardour, he anticipated the merchant.
And now the bashful man was relieved of his burden of shame, light or heavy as you please; but we verily say of some weight, as we have him at the beginning of a career which made the world ring till the echoes might have disturbed the gods, and we know that he was not otherwise without feelings pertaining to humanity; nay, we know, and shall tell, that on ONE occasion pity suffused an eye that was destined to be oftener and longer red with the fires of cruelty than was ever before in the world’s history the orb of a human being.
“And what do you give for wun?” he whispered, as he sidled up to the ear of the young anatomist who had been speaking to him.
“Sometimes as high as £10.”
And for certain, if the student had been curious enough to estimate the effect of such words upon such a man, to whom “ten pennies” would have been words of inspiration, he would have seen in that eye, no longer dull and muddy, the first access of that demon mammon, as by the touch upon the heart it raised the first pulses of a fever which was to grow and grow, till it dried up into a parched and senseless thing the fountain of pity; for, however inoperative, we are bound to say it was still there, as if abiding God’s judgments—and transform one nature altogether into another—for a purpose.
“And wouldn’t you give a pound more for a fresh wun?” said he, with that intoxication of hope which sometimes makes a beggar play with a new-born fortune.