Crackburn, an authority on the earlier printers, then in charge of the prints in the Astor Library, and who, for diversion, ground lenses on the sly, was another prize document. And so was Lockwood, the lapidary, famous as a designer of medals and seals; and many more such oddities. “Fine old copies,” Kelsey would say of them, “hand-printed, all of them; one or two, like old Silas, extremely rare.”
That he considered Felix entitled to a place in his private collection had been decided at their first meeting. “Met a mask with a man behind it,” he had announced to his intimates that same night. “Got a fine nose for what's worth having. Located that chant book as soon as he laid his hands on it. I didn't get any farther than the skin of his face and you won't, either. He has promised to come over, and when you have rubbed up against him for half an hour, as I did this morning, you will think as I do.”
Since that time, Felix had spent many comforting hours in Kelsey's little back room. Sometimes he would drop in about nine and remain until half past ten; at other times, it would be nearer midnight before he would turn the knob.
As for the shop itself, nothing up and down “The Avenue” was quite as odd, quite as ramshackly, or quite as picturesque. What the public saw, on either side of the down-two-steps entrance, was a bench with slanting shelves, holding a double row of books and two patched glass windows, protecting disordered heaps of prints, stained engravings, and old etchings, the whole embedded in dust.
What the owner's intimates saw, once they got inside and continued to the end of the building, was a low-ceiled room warmed by an old-fashioned Franklin stove and lighted by a drop covered by a green shade. All about were easy chairs, a table or two, a sideboard, some long shelves loaded down with books, and an iron safe which held some precious manuscripts and one or two early editions.
When the room was shut the shop was open, and when the shop was shut, the shutters fastened, and the two benches with their books lifted bodily and brought inside, the little back room, smoke-dried as an old ham, and as savory and inviting, once you got its flavor, was ready for his guests.
On one of these rare nights when the room was full, it happened that the same fifteenth-century chant book, which had brought Tim and Felix together, was lying on the table. The discussion which followed easily drifted into the influence of the Roman Catholic church on the art of the period; Felix maintaining that but for the impetus it gave, neither the art of illumination nor any of the other arts would at the time have reached the heights they attained.
“This missal is but an example of it,” he continued, drawing the battered, yellow-stained book toward him. “Whatever these old monks, with their religious fervor, touched they enriched and glorified, whether it were an initial letter, as you see here, or an altar-piece; and more than that, many of them painted wonderfully well.”
“And a narrow-minded, bigoted lot they were,” broke in Crackburn. “If they'd had their way there would not have been a printing-press in existence. If you are going to canonize anybody, begin with Aldus Minutius.”
“Only a difference in patrons,” chimed in Lockwood, “the difference between a pope and a doge.”