and soul.

The whole building, four stories tall, had once been a manufactory, but
Blizzard had subdivided its original lofts into pens, dens, passageways,
and rooms according to an elaborate plan of his own. And it was evident
to the most casual glance that expediency alone, untrammelled by any
consideration of purse, had been followed. Those walls, floors, and
ceilings, for instance, through which no sound of human origin, unaided
by mechanical device, could penetrate, must have cost a mint of money.
Nor could any man who depended for a living upon occasional pennies
dropped into a tin cup have got together so extensive a collection of
books upon scientific subjects, many of them handsomely bound and
printed in foreign countries. Works upon explosives, tunnelling,
electricity, and music were especially abundant, not only in English,
but in German. And there were books upon the organization of armies, and
upon the chemistry of precious stones. A cursory examination of his
books would have found the master of the house to be interested also in
obstetrics, in poisons, and in anesthesia; but of romance, humanity, or
poetry his library had but a single example, the "Monte Cristo" of the
elder Dumas.

Had all the doors and windows of the house been thrown open, and all its
inhabitants expelled, so that you could have free ingress with a
companion or two, and time and the mood to explore the whole of its
ramifications and arrangements, you must have concluded that the
designer of so much that was hideously obvious and so much that was
mysteriously obscure was a most extraordinary example of viciousness,
ability, purpose, and musicianship. You must have been staggered at
passing from a room containing a grand piano and a bust of Beethoven to
find yourself in a little operating-theatre such as any eminent surgeon