“As usual, sir,” Silvestre answered, “these original editions of the classics, these perfect old copies with the autographs of celebrated scholars, these piquant philological curiosities, of which academy and university have never heard, rightfully revert to Richard Heber.[7] It is the British lion’s share, to whom we are willing to surrender, with good grace, the Greek and Latin classics which we have ceased to understand. These fine collections of natural history, these masterpieces of workmanship and pictorial art, belong to Prince ——, who uses his studious tastes to still further enhance his great fortune. These mysteries of the middle ages, these phœnix-like precepts whose counterpart[8] is no longer in existence, these curious dramatic attempts of our ancestors, will swell the model library of M. de Soleine. These well-preserved facetiæ, so strikingly subtle and enjoyable, have been purchased by your friend M. Aimé-Martin. I need not tell you to whom these fresh, brilliant morocco bindings belong, with the triple fillets, wide dentelle, and sumptuous panels. He is the Shakespeare among the minor collectors, the Corneille of melodrama, the graceful and often eloquent interpreter of the feelings and virtues of the populace, who, after having depreciated the value of books in the morning, bought them for their weight in gold in the evening, not, however, without grinding his teeth like a mortally wounded boar, and turning a tragic eye, veiled by black eyebrows, upon his rivals.”
Theodore had ceased to listen. He was handling a beautiful volume that he
hurriedly measured with his Elzevirometer, a six-inch measure divided almost to infinity, by which he regulated the price, and, alas! the intrinsic merit also, of his books. He measured the accursed book ten times and as many times verified the troublesome calculation, muttered some words that I did not understand, finally changed color, and fainted in my arms. I had great difficulty in getting him into a passing carriage.
For a long time my attempts to learn the cause of his sudden grief were futile. He did not speak. He did not hear my words. It is the typhus fever, I thought, and the crisis of the fever.
I held him in my arms. I continued to question him. At last he spoke.
“You see in me,” he said, “the most unhappy of men. That book is the 1676 Virgil, on large paper, of which I thought that I had the best example known, and yet this is taller than mine, by the third of a line.[9] Prejudiced or spiteful minds might even call it half a line. A third of a line, good God!”
I was confounded. I saw that the delirium was increasing.
“A third of a line,” he repeated, shaking his fist furiously in the air like Ajax or Capaneus. All my limbs trembled.