“What you now call ridicule will a few years hence take the name of badinage; but let us talk of something else, or still better—suppose we read. Here is the Allgemeine Zeitung, or Blackwood’s Magazine.”
“Do you take Blackwood’s?” inquired Hamilton.
“I get it and any books I wish for from the royal library. No one can be more magnificently liberal than the King of Bavaria, in this respect. When you go to Munich, your banker can sign papers making himself answerable for any books which may be lost or injured while in your possession; and this is the only formality necessary to insure you the unlimited use of a library containing upwards of eight hundred thousand volumes.”
“But you do not mean to say that I, a foreigner, may take the books home with me?”
“Your ideas are too English to comprehend such liberality, and so were mine when I first came to Munich; but the fact is, you may take the books to your own apartment and read them at your leisure. Of course you must be careful not to injure them in any way.”
“But if many people enjoy this privilege, the books must be spoiled in time.”
“You think, perhaps, it would be wiser if the eight hundred thousand volumes were put into glass book-cases, and merely exhibited to strangers, instead of being placed at their disposition? As far as I can judge, however, from personal observation, the books are not either spoiled or even soiled; at least, none I have ever required; and, you see,” she said, removing a paper cover from one of them, “they are very nicely bound.”
“Do you read a great deal?” he asked.
“I once thought so, but on referring to the list of books actually read at the end of the year, it was so insignificant that I now make no pretension to being what is called a reader—a few memoirs, travels, an occasional novel, and the newspapers, fill up my time completely. But now you really must take a book, or admire the country in silence, for I cannot allow my Allgemeine Zeitung to remain longer unread. I have only time for one each day, and I get into a fit of despair when they accumulate.”
“I think if you won’t talk to me I should like to smoke a cigar.”