"May all the stories that you have before you," said Apostolo, "go to enrich your library with a volume like this one! It is yours and I owe it to you twice over."
"It is mine," said Lowrich, taking hold of it enthusiastically. "Or rather it belongs to you," he went on gaily, passing it from his hands to mine. "I promised it to you this morning!"
And so it is that the most magnificent copy of the Poliphilus, the giant of my Lilliputian collection, figures in it today nec pluribus impar. I submit it voluntarily to the gazes of book lovers, who cannot stop themselves from seeing in it a magnificent book… and one I did not pay the earth for!