“That is well!” sighed the worthy ecclesiastic.
“At least,” Theodore continued, “unless some one should discover the large-paper copy, of which there is a hint, if my memory serves me, in the bibliographic jumble of David Clement.”[12]
The curé groaned audibly, and, rising from his chair, bent over Theodore to make him clearly understand, without ambiguity or equivocation, that he was in the last stage of the bibliomaniac’s typhus which is spoken of in the “Journal des Sciences Médicales,” and that he should not think of anything but his salvation.
Theodore had never intrenched himself behind that insolent negation of unbelievers which is the science of fools; but the dear man had pushed the useless study of the letter, in books, too far to comprehend the spirit. In a perfect state of health a doctrine of any kind would give him a fever, or a dogma induce lockjaw. In a theological matter he would have lowered his colors before a Saint-Simonian. He turned his face to the wall.
A long time passed without a word, and we should have thought that he was dead, except as I bent close to him I heard him murmur feebly, “A third of a line! God of goodness and justice! but where will you give me back that third of a line, and how far can your omnipotence retrieve the irreparable error of that binder?”
One of his friends, a bibliophile, came in a minute later. They told him that Theodore was in the last agony; that he was delirious to the point of thinking that the Abbé Lemascrier had made the third part of the world; and that he had lost his power of speech a quarter of an hour before.
“I am going to make sure of it,” said the amateur. “By what mistake in pagination do we recognize the genuine 1635 Elzevir edition of Cæsar?” he asked Theodore.
“153 for 149.”
“Very good. And of the Terence of the same year?”