streets, and established himself in it, with all his books and scientific odds and ends. And of books and odds and ends he had many — for he was a man of some considerable learning . . . 'an out-and-out eccentric,' as his neighbours said of him. He positively passed among them for a sorcerer; he had even been given the title of an 'insectivist.' He studied chemistry, mineralogy, entomology, botany, and medicine; he doctored patients gratis with herbs and metallic powders of his own invention, after the method of Paracelsus. These same powders were the means of his bringing to the grave his pretty, young, too delicate wife, whom he passionately loved, and by whom he had an only son. With the same powders he fairly ruined his son's health too, in the hope and intention of strengthening it, as he detected anæmia and a tendency to consumption in his constitution inherited from his mother. The name of 'sorcerer' had been given him partly because he regarded himself as a descendant — not in the direct line, of course — of the great Bruce, in honour of whom he had called his son Yakov, the Russian form of James.
He was what is called a most good-natured man, but of melancholy temperament, pottering, and timid, with a bent for everything mysterious
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