“Its very self. We had a jolly dinner that day: charming women, fresh oysters, intelligent people, and champagne. I reached the sale three minutes after the hammer fell.”
“Sir,” cried Theodore in a fury, “when the ‘Vintisettine’ is to be sold, one does not dine!”
His vitality, which had been sustained by the excitement of the conversation, as the bellows revives a dying spark, was exhausted by his last effort. His lips muttered once more, “A third of a line!” but they were his last words.
At the time that we gave up all hope of his recovery, we moved his bed near to his book-shelves, from which we took down, one by one, every book for which he seemed to ask with his eyes, letting him look the longest at those that we thought would please him the most.
He died at midnight, lying between a Du Seuil and a Padeloup, his hands lovingly clasping a Thouvenin.
The next day we followed his hearse, at the head of a great crowd of sorrowful morocco-finishers, and we sealed his tomb with a stone bearing the following inscription, which he had parodied for himself from Franklin’s epitaph:
HERE LIES, IN
ITS WOODEN BINDING,
A FOLIO COPY OF THE BEST
EDITION OF MAN, WRITTEN IN
THE LANGUAGE OF A GOLDEN
AGE, WHICH THE WORLD
NO LONGER UNDERSTANDS.
TO-DAY
IT IS A SPOILED
OLD BOOK,
STAINED AND
IMPERFECT, LACKING THE TITLE-PAGE,
WORM-EATEN AND INJURED
BY DECAY. WE
DARE NOT ANTICIPATE
FOR IT THE USELESS
HONOR OF A
REPRINT.