'Diable de laideur! You see zat viz your own eyes?'
'And yet you be yourself not vare ugly, after all!'
'So I have heard, Bonenfant. You will be still more surprised to feel that this is the case, when you know that I lodged in the same house with Miss Brentnall a whole year. Indeed, she occupied the very next room to me. I was second-story front, she second-story back, during all that time; and do you know that I became very well acquainted with her?'
'Ah! It is pos-_sible_ for a gentleman to be vare polite to vare ugly woman!'
'Yes, but from preference, I mean. I could shut my eyes, and hear her voice, or open them at the transient moment when she was smiling, and forget that she was homely at all. I discovered that she was the only remnant of a large family: that awakened my pity. In addition, that she was very well-informed, thought and conversed well: that aroused my respect. And when, in spite of a face and figure which by poetic justice should have belonged to Sin itself, I perceived that she had the kindest of hearts, and the most delicate of sensibilities, I am not ashamed to confess that I soon became attached to her.'
'Attach? You have fall in love viz zat e-scary-crow? You have marri-ed her?'
'Hear me through, Bonenfant, and you will find out. In the present instance, I mean, by the word 'attached,' nothing but a pure Platonic friendship. I do not make acquaintances easily. I visited nobody in New-York at that time. There was no one whose cheerful fireside I could make my own for an evening; and my natural tastes, to say nothing of any other feeling, kept me away from drinking-saloons. Moreover, I had an insatiate longing to make something of myself. I wanted the means for buying books, for travelling, for putting myself into what I considered good society. Accordingly, I often brought home, at evening, the specimens I had been working upon all day, and continued my labors long into the night. While I was busily engaged with the knife or the needle, the gentlest little tap would come at the door, so gentle, so unlike any other sound, that, however absorbed I might be, I always heard it, knew it was Miss Brentnall, and said: 'Walk in!' So, in hopped that little eighth world-wonder of ugliness, now with an orange for my supper, now with some pretty ornithological engraving, of which, by the merest chance, she always had a duplicate copy, and whose effect she would like to see on my wall. When she went out, she always forgot to take it with her; and in a few months, my room, through such like little kindnesses, became quite a portrait-gallery of celebrated birds. Sometimes, Miss Brentnall spent the whole evening with me. On such occasions, it was her greatest delight to stand by my table, and see some poor, mussed, shrivelled lark or Canary grow plump and saucy again, through the transformations of my art. She called it 'bird-resurrection.' For an hour at a time, she would stay close at my elbow, perfectly quiet, holding a pair of glass eyes in her hand. When I asked for one of them, she gave it to me with all the happiness of a helpful child; and, when at last both eyes were fixed in the specimen, I have seen her clap her hands, and jump up and down. In process of time, she became of real assistance to me. So apt a mind had she, that from merely witnessing my methods, she learned to stuff birds herself; and one evening, when I called 'come in,' to the well-known tap, I was surprised by seeing a parrot in her hands, prepared and mounted almost as well as I could have done it myself. It was a little present to the Professor, she said: she had been at work upon it for the last two days. From that time, her voluntary services were in my constant employ, whenever I worked of evenings.