I felt as if the whole man were a moral and physical humbug; his wonderful beauty of face, for aught I knew, might be removable like a mask; and, tall and comely as his figure looked, he was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him save the wicked expression of his grin.  The fantasy of his spectral character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as loudly as himself.

By and by, he paused all at once; so suddenly, indeed, that my own cachinnation lasted a moment longer.

“Ah, excuse me!” said he.  “Our interview seems to proceed more merrily than it began.”

“It ends here,” answered I.  “And I take shame to myself that my folly has lost me the right of resenting your ridicule of a friend.”

“Pray allow me,” said the stranger, approaching a step nearer, and laying his gloved hand on my sleeve.  “One other favor I must ask of you.  You have a young person here at Blithedale, of whom I have heard,—­whom, perhaps, I have known,—­and in whom, at all events, I take a peculiar interest.  She is one of those delicate, nervous young creatures, not uncommon in New England, and whom I suppose to have become what we find them by the gradual refining away of the physical system among your women.  Some philosophers choose to glorify this habit of body by terming it spiritual; but, in my opinion, it is rather the effect of unwholesome food, bad air, lack of outdoor exercise, and neglect of bathing, on the part of these damsels and their female progenitors, all resulting in a kind of hereditary dyspepsia.  Zenobia, even with her uncomfortable surplus of vitality, is far the better model of womanhood.  But—­to revert again to this young person—­she goes among you by the name of Priscilla.  Could you possibly afford me the means of speaking with her?”

“You have made so many inquiries of me,” I observed, “that I may at least trouble you with one.  What is your name?”

He offered me a card, with “Professor Westervelt” engraved on it.  At the same time, as if to vindicate his claim to the professorial dignity, so often assumed on very questionable grounds, he put on a pair of spectacles, which so altered the character of his face that I hardly knew him again.  But I liked the present aspect no better than the former one.

“I must decline any further connection with your affairs,” said I, drawing back.  “I have told you where to find Zenobia.  As for Priscilla, she has closer friends than myself, through whom, if they see fit, you can gain access to her.”

“In that case,” returned the Professor, ceremoniously raising his hat, “good-morning to you.”