Cerini’s face showed a gentle craftiness. “We are in Italy, my son. If any one could find these gems, any one could be librarian”—and the old man chuckled quietly to himself.
Inez’ eyes were fastened upon a little purple velvet case inlaid with jewels. Cerini opened it carefully, exposing a small volume similarly bound and similarly adorned. Armstrong eagerly watched the interest in the girl’s face as the full splendor of the masterpiece impressed itself upon her—the marvellous delicacy of design, the gorgeousness of color, the magnificence of the decoration and the miniatures. Inez drew in her breath excitedly and bent nearer to the magnifying-glass which it was necessary to use in tracing the intricacy of the work.
“Wonderful!” she cried, and then was silent.
“It belonged to Lorenzo the Magnificent, and represents the finest of the quattrocento work, my daughter,” explained the old man, pleased as was Armstrong by her unfeigned admiration. “The patrons of the book in the fifteenth century considered gems of thought as the most precious of all jewels. The page containing them must be written upon the finest and the rarest parchment. They could not inlay costly stones, so they employed the most famous artists to place upon the page in beaten gold and gorgeous colors a representation of the jewels and miniatures as perfect as art at its highest could produce. Can you wonder, my daughter, that men brought up in the school of neo-Platonism should look upon the invention of printing as an evil and an innovation to be opposed?”
Inez would not permit Cerini to close the volume until she had feasted her eyes upon every page.
“Have you not prepared me for an anti-climax?” she asked, with a sigh, as Armstrong suggested a visit to the room of illuminations. “Surely there is nothing else here to surpass what I have just seen.”
The librarian answered. “Nothing to surpass it, truly, but other volumes equally interesting.”
The old man led them into a larger room filled with wooden cases whose glass tops were covered with faded green curtains. Costly tapestries lined the walls, but Inez’ attention was quickly taken from them as Cerini pulled aside the curtains and disclosed the resplendent wealth beneath. Heavy choir-books, classic manuscripts, books of hours, breviaries embellished by Lorenzo Monaco, master of Fra Angelico, by Benozzo Gozzoli, whose frescos still make the Riccardi famous, and other artists whose names have long since been forgotten, but whose work remains as an everlasting monument to a departed art. Magnificent examples of every school, from the early Byzantine to the decadent style of the sixteenth century, combined to teach the present the omnipotence of the past.
From case to case they passed, their guide indicating the variations and the significance of the different schools, out into the great library itself, in which, with its noble yet simple proportions as laid down by Michelangelo, Inez found a relief after the gorgeousness and grandeur of the last hour. Armstrong pointed out to her the plutei upon which the great books rested, and to which they now remained chained as in the olden days, four centuries back, when they began their eternal vigil. Life outside the old walls had changed mightily since Cosimo de’ Medici, the first grand-duke, laid their foundations. Cosimo, “pater patriæ,” the real founder of the collection, Pietro and Giovanni de’ Medici had come and gone; Lorenzo il Magnifico had lived and died, bequeathing to them his illustrious name; Charles VIII. of France had destroyed the power of the house of the Medici, the Medici had again regained their own, the house of Lorraine had succeeded them, the separate states had been merged into a great kingdom—and still the volumes held their places at the end of their chains, as if to prove the immutability of learning as compared with the changeability of princes.
At Armstrong’s suggestion, Cerini led them back into his study, where the old man again took his place at his desk, as his visitors seated themselves where they could best watch him and listen to his words. It was, indeed, as Armstrong had expressed it, a picture for an old master. Cerini was clad in the black silk soutane of his learned order, with the biretta upon his head. He was spare, and the skin upon his face and hands was as dried and colored as the ancient parchment of the books with which he lived. The dim light coming through the stained-glass window enhanced the weirdness of his aspect, and as one looked he seemed the personification of the ancient written manuscript vivified and speaking the words which one would have expected to read upon the page.