- end_line
- 1655
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.590Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1591
- text
- unpolished boots, offering at the same time to remove their blemishes.
“Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur,” cried the man, at last running up to Israel.
And with tender violence he forced him towards the box, and lifting
this unwilling customer’s right foot thereon, was proceeding vigorously
to work, when suddenly illuminated by a dreadful suspicion, Israel,
fetching the box a terrible kick, took to his false heels and ran like
mad over the bridge.
Incensed that his politeness should receive such an ungracious return,
the man pursued, which but confirming Israel in his suspicions he ran
all the faster, and thanks to his fleetness, soon succeeded in escaping
his pursuer.
Arrived at last at the street and the house to which he had been
directed, in reply to his summons, the gate very strangely of itself
swung open, and much astonished at this unlooked-for sort of
enchantment, Israel entered a wide vaulted passage leading to an open
court within. While he was wondering that no soul appeared, suddenly he
was hailed from a dark little window, where sat an old man cobbling
shoes, while an old woman standing by his side was thrusting her head
into the passage, intently eyeing the stranger. They proved to be the
porter and portress, the latter of whom, upon hearing his summons, had
invisibly thrust open the gate to Israel, by means of a spring
communicating with the little apartment.
Upon hearing the name of Doctor Franklin mentioned, the old woman, all
alacrity, hurried out of her den, and with much courtesy showed Israel
across the court, up three flights of stairs to a door in the rear of
the spacious building. There she left him while Israel knocked.
“Come in,” said a voice.
And immediately Israel stood in the presence of the venerable Doctor
Franklin.
Wrapped in a rich dressing-gown, a fanciful present from an admiring
Marchesa, curiously embroidered with algebraic figures like a
conjuror’s robe, and with a skull-cap of black satin on his hive of a
head, the man of gravity was seated at a huge claw-footed old table,
round as the zodiac. It was covered with printer papers, files of
documents, rolls of manuscript, stray bits of strange models in wood
and metal, odd-looking pamphlets in various languages, and all sorts of
books, including many presentation-copies, embracing history,
mechanics, diplomacy, agriculture, political economy, metaphysics,
meteorology, and geometry. The walls had a necromantic look, hung round
with barometers of different kinds, drawings of surprising inventions,
wide maps of far countries in the New World, containing vast empty
spaces in the middle, with the word DESERT diffusely printed there, so
as to span five-and-twenty degrees of longitude with only two
syllables,—which printed word, however, bore a vigorous pen-mark, in
the Doctor’s hand, drawn straight through it, as if in summary repeal
of it; crowded topographical and trigonometrical charts of various
parts of Europe; with geometrical diagrams, and endless other
surprising hangings and upholstery of science.
The chamber itself bore evident marks of antiquity. One part of the
rough-finished wall was sadly cracked, and covered with dust, looked
dim and dark. But the aged inmate, though wrinkled as well, looked neat
and hale. Both wall and sage were compounded of like materials,—lime
and dust; both, too, were old; but while the rude earth of the wall had
no painted lustre to shed off all fadings and tarnish, and still keep
fresh without, though with long eld its core decayed: the living lime
and dust of the sage was frescoed with defensive bloom of his soul.
- title
- Chunk 4