This explanation, though a probable one, did not satisfy Rodolph as to the horrid scream which still resounded in his ears. Though he had rung the bell with considerable violence, no person had as yet replied to his summons; he could distinctly hear the shutting of several doors, and then, behind a small oval glass let in beside the door, and on which Rodolph had mechanically kept his eyes fixed, he saw the haggard, cadaverous countenance of a human being; a mass of reddish hair strongly mixed with gray, and a long beard of the same hue, completed the hideous ensemble; the face was seen but for an instant, and vanished as quickly as though it had been a mere creation of fancy, leaving Rodolph in a state of perturbation impossible to describe. Short as had been the period of this apparition's visit, he had yet in those brief instants recalled features precisely similar and for ever engraved on his memory,--the eyes shining with the colour and brilliancy of the _aqua marina_ beneath their bushy sandy eyebrows, the livid complexion, the nose thin, projecting, and curving like an eagle's beak, with its nostrils so curiously expanded and carved out till they exposed a portion of the nasal cartilage, resembled closely a certain Polidori, whose name had been so unceremoniously committed by Murphy, in his conversation with Graün, to regions not mentionable to polite ears. Though Rodolph had not seen Polidori during the last sixteen or seventeen years, he had a thousand reasons for keeping every feature well in his remembrance. The only thing that told against the identity of the individual he believed existed under the disguised name of this quack dentist was the circumstance of his having red hair, while the Polidori of Rodolph's acquaintance had almost black. That Rodolph experienced no wonder (always supposing his conjectures as to the identity correct) at finding a man whose profound learning, rare talent, and vast intelligence he well knew, sunk to such a degradation,--it might even be infamy,--was because he knew equally well that all these high attainments and noble gifts were allied to such entire perversity, such wild and irregular passions, inclinations so corrupt, and, above all, an affected scorn and contempt for the opinion of the world, which might lead this man, when want and misery overtook him, to seek, from choice, the lowest and least honourable paths of subsistence, and to enjoy a sort of malevolent satisfaction in the idea of him, the talented, the learned, burying all these precious treasures beneath the ignoble calling to which he had devoted his vast powers of mind and body. Still, be it remembered that, spite of the close resemblance between the charlatan surgeon-dentist and the Polidori of bygone years, there still existed discrepancies so great that Rodolph balanced, in deep uncertainty, respecting their proving to be one and the same person. At length, turning to Pipelet, he inquired: