Although not assisting in the pageant itself, there are, I perceive, numerous volumes that, nevertheless, appear to be in communication with such of their companions as have responded to the signal. Beckoning glances from those below are answered every now and then by faint responses from the volumes above, their leaves as yet unfoxed by Time. Of these latter there are many, and I soon perceive that they bear the names of living authors of note who must wait until their earthly life is spent ere they too may answer the roll-call and take rank with the immortals. How, apparently without volition of their own, as if touched by an unseen hand, the leaves of In Memoriam rustle and the pages of The Autocrat flutter!
The only participants I see that seem to be out of place assemble once a year in solemn conclave, conversing, it is true, but wearing a dejected look. Countless volumes, these, principally first and rare editions, many bound in lovely leathers, exquisitely gilded, lettered, and tooled, bearing innumerable stamps and monograms, coats-of-arms, and ancient book-plates. Many of them I recognize as having seen before in high spirits, discoursing with their companions during the hour of the nightly pageants. This yearly and unusually large gathering, characterized by its extreme gravity, puzzled me at first, until I discovered it was composed of the ghosts of borrowed books, unhappy in their covers, lamenting the loss of their former possessors who had once cherished them so fondly. I see, too, Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone, Brantôme’s Dames Galantes, Balzac’s Physiologie du Mariage, La Fontaine’s Contes with the Eisen, De Hooge, and Fragonard plates, and in yonder soiled, foul-smelling tome I perceive the smutty old satirist and Doctor-Franciscan Rabelais. Why he should be called out at all, seems a mystery, his pitch is so defiling, and his boluses are so nauseating.
Some participants there are which at first baffled my comprehension. These, though perfectly composed themselves and mingling freely with their fellows, nevertheless appear to excite an inordinate curiosity among their companions which is never gratified. The titles they bear are plainly discernible; but only when the march becomes sufficiently animated to cause a violent fluttering of the leaves can I catch a glimpse of the author’s name on the title-page. Then I discover these numerous tomes invariably reveal the name of a most voluminous and versatile author, whose personality it is impossible to fathom, an author writing with equal facility in all languages and on all topics, in poetry and in prose, persistently preserving his incognito under the name of “Anon.”
I see, also, participating in the pageant semi-annually, and on these occasions directing, as it were, the imposing march of the volumes, numerous men of middle and advanced age that seem to exhale an odor of musty tomes. Occasionally these pause in their march before some one of the shelves to take down a volume which I have not before seen in the procession, handling it with reverential care, as if conscious of the gems it enshrined. Sometimes it is a volume by a living author of note; again it is an encyclopædia or concordance, or a special number of some dusty periodical that has long lain unopened. On inquiry of my informant, I learned that this human element consists of the painstaking custodians who had the volumes in keeping, the scholarly and unappreciated librarians who devoted so much labor to the cataloguing and classification of their charges.
Abruptly close the clasps of the most venerable tome. Again I hear the rustling of pages and folding of covers, as each volume returns to its accustomed place and once more sinks into hallowed slumber. The librarian of one of the great libraries where the nightly pageant forms scouted the idea of his charges leaving their retreats. “Would I not hear them?—besides the dust remains undisturbed!” he replied. But a dead author makes no noise and leaves no tell-tale traces when he quits his tenement of print. Books, so eminently human, in the natural course of things must have their ghosts. Of course, the librarian’s candle would dissipate them, as mists are dispersed by the sun.
EPILOGUE.
Was ich besitze, seh’ ich wie im Weiten,