“Oh, no; he isn’t a pig,” I protested. “He’s one of the greatest, and wisest, and best men in the world, so of course he can’t be a horrid pig. But I’ll tell you what he is. He’s a charlatan and an impostor.” “Really? How do you know?” Isabel wondered. “I heard Aunt Elizabeth tell my father so.” “Oh, well, then it must be true,” Isabel assented. He lived with us till I was ten or eleven, at first in Florence, and afterwards in Paris. All day long he would sit in his room and write, (on the most beautiful, smooth, creamy paper—what wouldn’t I have given to have acquired some of it for my own literary purposes!) and in the evening he would receive visitors: oh, such funny people, so unlike the people who came to see my mother and father. The men, for example, almost all of them, as Mr. Ambrose himself did, wore their hair long, so that it fell about their collars; whilst almost all the women had their hair cut short. And then, they dressed so funnily: the women in the plainest garments—skirts and jackets, without a touch of ornament; the men in sombreros and Spanish cloaks, instead of ordinary hats and coats. They would come night after night, and pass rapidly through the outer regions of our establishment, and disappear in Mr. Ambrose’s private room. And thence I could hear their voices, murmuring, murmuring, after I had gone to bed. At the same time, very likely, in another part of the house, my mother would be entertaining another company, such a different company—beautiful ladies, in bright-hued silks, with shining jewels, and diamond-dust in their hair (yes, in that ancient period, ladies of fashion, on the Continent at least, used to powder their hair with a glittering substance known as “diamond-dust”) and officers in gold-embroidered uniforms, and men in dress-suits. And there would be music, and dancing, or theatricals, or a masquerade, and always a lovely supper—to some of whose unconsumed delicacies I would fall heir next day. Only four of Mr. Ambrose’s visitors at all detach themselves, as individuals, from the cloud. One was Mr. Oddo Yodo. Mr. Oddo Yodo was a small, grey-bearded, dark-skinned Hungarian gentleman, with another name, something like Polak or Bolak. But I called him Mr. Oddo Yodo, because whenever we met, on his way to or from the chamber of Mr. Ambrose, he would bow to me, and smile pleasantly, and say: “Oddo Yodo, Oddo Yodo.” I discovered, in the end, that he was paying me the compliment of saluting me in my native tongue. Another was an Irishman, named Slevin. I remember him, a burly creature, with a huge red beard, because one day he arrived at our house in a state of appalling drunkenness. I remember the incredulous dismay with which I saw a man in that condition enter our very house. I remember our old servant, Alexandre, supporting him to Mr. Ambrose’s door, nodding his head and making a face the while, to signify his opinion.