Original (English)

p. 1THE REAL THING. I. When the porter’s wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced “A gentleman—with a lady, sir,” I had, as I often had in those days, for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision of sitters.  Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but not in the sense I should have preferred.  However, there was nothing at first to indicate that they might not have come for a portrait.  The gentleman, a man of fifty, very high and very straight, with