THE BIBLIOMANIAC
THE BIBLIOMANIAC
You all know Theodore. I have come to strew some flowers upon his grave, praying heaven that the earth may touch him lightly.
These two familiar phrases will tell you plainly that I am about to consecrate some pages to him as an obituary notice or funeral oration.
It is twenty years since Theodore retired from the world, to work or to be idle: which of the two was a great secret. He dreamed, and no one knew what he dreamed about. He passed his life surrounded by books, and occupied himself with nothing else, which gave some people the idea that he was writing a book which would supersede all other books; but they were evidently mistaken.
Theodore had studied too much not to know that this book had been written three hundred years ago. It was the thirteenth chapter of the first book of Rabelais.
Theodore no longer talked, nor laughed, neither played cards or gambled, nor ate, no longer went to balls or to the theatre. The women whom he had loved in his youth no longer attracted him, or at most he looked only at their feet; and when some elegant and brilliantly colored footgear caught his attention, alas! he would say, heaving a sigh from the depths of his chest, there is a great waste of good morocco! He had formerly followed the fashions. Those who remember the time, tell us that he was the first to tie his cravat on the left side, notwithstanding the dictum of Garat, who tied his on the right, and in spite of the common herd, who still continue to tie theirs in the middle.
Theodore was no longer worried by the fashions. He had only one dispute with his tailor during twenty years: “Sir,” he said to him one day, “it will be the last coat I shall take from you, if you again forget to make my pockets in quarto.”