"Humph!" said the vrouw. "Give me the young man. A cold marble creature is not my idea of a goddess."
"'Tis a Greek goddess," said Spinoza with labored lightness. "They are indeed old friends of mine—saving the young man, who is doubtless a pupil of the old. He is a very learned philologist, this Dr. van den Ende: he taught me Latin—"
"And Greek goddesses," flashed the vrouw affectionately.
Spinoza tried to say something, but fell a-coughing instead, and began to ascend to his room. He was agitated: and it was his principle to quit society whenever his emotions threatened to exceed philosophical moderation.
"Wait! I have thy key," cried the goodwife, pursuing him. "And oh! what dust in thy room! No wonder thou art troubled with a phthisis!"
"Thou didst not arrange anything?" he cried in alarm.
"A flick with a feather-brush, as I took in thy letters—no more; my hand itched to be at thy papers, but see! not one is in order!"
She unlocked his door, revealing a little room in which books and papers mingled oddly with the bedroom furniture and the tools and bench of his craft. There were two windows with shabby red curtains. On nails hung a few odd garments, one of which, the doublet anciently pierced by the fanatic's dagger, merely served as a memento, though not visibly older than the rest of his wardrobe. "Who puts a mediocre article into a costly envelope?" was the philosopher's sartorial standpoint. Over the mantel (on which among some old pipes lay two silver buckles, his only jewellery) was pinned a charcoal sketch of Masaniello in shirt-sleeves, with a net on his shoulder, done by Spinoza himself, and obviously with his own features as model: perhaps in some whimsical moment when he figured himself as an intellectual revolutionary. A portfolio that leaned against a microscope contained black and white studies of some of his illustrious visitors, which caught happily their essential features without detail. The few other wall-pictures were engravings by other hands. Spinoza sat down on his truckle-bed with a great sigh of content.
"Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto," he murmured. Then his eye roving around: "My spiders' webs are gone!" he groaned.
"I could not disarrange aught in sweeping them away!" deprecated the goodwife.