Perhaps you remember our friend Abbot Lowrich whom we met in Ragusa, in Spalato, in Vienna, in Munich, in Pisa, in Bologna, and in Lausanne. He is an excellent fellow, who is most knowledgeable, but who knows a multitude of things that we would be happy to forget if we knew them like he does: the name of the printer of a bad book, the year of birth of a fool and a thousand other details of trivial importance. Abbot Lowrich has the glory of having discovered the real name of Kuicknackius, who was called Starkius, and not, please note, Polycarpus Starkius, who wrote eight fine hendecasyllables on the thesis of Kornmannus de ritibus (on rites) and on the thesis of Kornmannus de ritibus et doctrina scarabeorum (on rites and the doctrine of scarab beetles), but Martinus Starkius, the man who wrote thirty-two hendecasyllables on fleas. Apart from that, Abbot Lowrich deserves to be well known and liked; he is witty, has his heart in the right place, is actively and sincerely obliging, and he adds to these precious qualities a lively and singular imagination, which greatly embellishes his conversation, as long as it does not fall into enumerating minor biographical and bibliographical details. I am reconciled to this slight peccadillo of his, and whenever I meet Abbot Lowrich in my constant comings and goings across Europe, I run to him from afar. And I last met him no more than three months ago.
I had arrived at night at the Two Towers Hotel in Treviso, but I had only settled in very late, and I had not set foot in the town itself. In the morning, as I was going down the stairs, I saw in front of me one of those strange figures whose faces are visible from every angle. It was wearing a hat that defied all description, adjusted to its head in a way that was maladjusted, a red and green tie knotted like a scarf, a good four inches above the collar of the jacket on the left-hand side and a good four inches below it on the right, a pair of trousers brushed in a slipshod manner on one leg while the other leg billowed over the back of a boot with a sort of coquetry. It had with it a huge irremovable wallet in which lay so many titles of books, so many notices, so many plans, so many sketches, so many priceless treasures for a man of learning that, if he had dropped it, even a rag-and-bone man would not have picked it up. There were no two ways about it, it was Lowrich. "Lowrich!" I exclaimed, and we fell into each other's arms.
"I know where you're going," he said, after we had exchanged a few friendly words, and then, when I had learned that he too had only just arrived: "You asked for the address of a bookseller, and you were given that of Apostolo Capoduro who resides in the strada dei Schiavoni. I'm going there too, but I don't hold out much hope, for I've visited his shop twice in ten years and never found books older than the novels of Abbot Chiari. That old bookshop has died the death, been ruined and sacked by barbarians. But did you have in mind something in particular to ask him for?"
"I'll admit to you," I answered, "that it would pain me to leave Northern Italy without taking with me 'The Dream of Poliphilus', of which I have heard it said that it is a most curious object and is to be found in Treviso if it is to be found anywhere."
"If it is to be found anywhere," he exclaimed, "is, to be sure, a prudent rider, for 'The Dream of Poliphilus', or, better still, Friar Francesco Colonna's 'Hypnerotomachia' is a book that old bibliographers call by the epithet: Albo corvo rarior. All I can say for sure is that if this white crow is to be found in any aviary, as we cannot but assume, it will definitely not be in Apostolo's. I think I'm sure enough of my facts to swear here by the household gods of Aldus Manutius the Elder (God keep him haloed in an everlasting glory) that, if this scamp Apostolo succeeds in providing you with a copy of the book in question in the 1499 first edition, for the second edition belongs, more or less, to the run-of-the-mill type of book, I hereby affirm that I'll make you a present of it out of my own purse, the contents of which this generous action on my part would cause to weigh considerably less."
Just then we entered the shop of Apostolo, who, his quill pen poised over a sheet of paper, seemed absorbed in deep meditation, though he at last grew aware of our presence, and appeared to joyfully recognize the unforgettable face of Abbot Lowrich. "Is it indeed the Lord, dear abbot," he said, hugging him, "who has sent you to extricate me from the most awkward predicament that I have ever found myself in? You cannot but know that I have been publishing, for some months now, the Adriatic Literary Gazette, which is, as all are agreed upon, the most erudite and witty of Europe's journals. Well! This rare scholarly journal, which is destined to have the world admire it and to get me back my fortune, is under threat of not appearing tomorrow for want of six small columns of serial, for which I have had recourse to my imagination tired out by study and business in vain. An evil spirit must have encompassed my ruin and sown disorder in my editor's office. The young muse who used to write my articles on moral education has gone into labour. The composer who was to let me have this morning a brand new type of cantata has written to say that it will take him at least a week to finish it, and the able financier who deals with questions of finance and political economy was sent to jail for non-payment of debt yesterday. For heaven's sake, my dear abbot, sit down at this table where I've sweated blood all night without my brain being able to yield a single line, and jot down five or six pages just as they come to you, if only a short story that won't have been used more than two or three times already."
"Wait one moment," Abbot Lowrich riposted. "We'll have time enough to deal with your affairs after we've dealt with our own. We did not come to you, my friend from Paris, and myself from the fjords of Norway, to make good a missing cantata by a lazy composer, or to dash off a pot boiler, but to see some of these books that are at least worth the trouble and expense of a journey, a good first edition duly documented, a well-preserved cinquecento rarity with its date of publication, a valuable volume printed by the Aldine Press in which its English and French bookbinders have deigned to arrange margins."
"As you please," replied Apostolo. "And I am all the more willing to consent to it as this inspection will not take us long. I have one work only worthy of being examined by connoisseurs like you. But what a work it is," he added, taking out of its triple wrapping an impressive looking folio. "What a work indeed," he went on, looking solemn, after he had quite detached it from its prison of wrapping paper. "A work to marvel at…" And he held out the book to Abbot Lowrich while giving him a look full of confidence and pride.
"Damnation!" murmured Lowrich, after having run his eye, as was his wont, over the unfamiliar treasure. Then he turned to me, but very different from what he had been the moment before, his arms hanging down at his side, his eye downcast, his forehead pale. "Damnation!" he muttered in French in a voice hardly raised and so that he could only be heard by me. "It's that damn book that I undertook to give you if it was here, the first edition of the Poliphilus… It's here, the traitor, and as fine as if it had just been printed. Things like this only happen to me…"
"Calm down," I answered, laughing. "Perhaps we'll get it for a price less than you think. And how much is Master Apostolo asking for this rarity?"