/ ^na W1L ROO R wfa n tia AN OCCASIONAL PUBLICATION OF THE ROWFANT CLUB Number One AUGUST, MCM Cornell University Library The original of tinis bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924102199977 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 102 199 977 AN-0CC^5I(W7VtrP bjwfa¥t> FCATION C L u i ^aMnfaaMUii CAa^/e^ '^loc/ic', A TRANSLATION OF CHARLES NODIER'S STORY OF TftE BIBLIO- MANIAC, WITH A FORE- WORD CONCERN l.NG THE AUTHOR, BY FRANK H. GINN, A MEMBER OF THE ROWFANT CLUB, AS READ AT THE CLUB SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER TWE.NTY- ONE, MDCCCXCVI CLEVELAND MCM l-U One hundred and twenty-four copies of this first number of Rowfantia, printed in the month of August, igoo. This is nuvt- ber.jj.-'j!. I'^CO [^5^:11 CHftRLES NODIER FOREWORD. MY reasons for offering to the Rowfanters a translation of The Bibliomaniac are three- fold: First, Charles Nodier was a bibliophile, and a collector and lover of candles ; second, his stories are untranslated, with the excep- tion of two. The Bibliomaniac, pub- lished by J. O. Wright & Co., in an edition of 150 on Japan paper, and Trilby, a Scotch story, dis- covered and translated after Du Maurier's success under the same title ; third, his stories are not found in the French departments of our libraries, and are to be obtained only with difficulty in America. From many standpoints he must appeal to all interested in good 4 Foreword. books, whether by the term i' good books ' ' one refers either to the out- side or inside of the volume. Primarily, Nodier was a story- teller, the raconteur par excellence; birth, childhood, education and en- vironment, natural disposition and temperament, all fitted him to re- ceive lasting impressions of current events — to separate the dramatic, poetic and beautiful from the com- monplace and uninteresting, and in after days to give forth the ex- perience embellished by a fertile imagination, poetic genius and the knowledge of universal folklore. By birth he was a Franche-Com- tois, born in 1780, at Besangon in the Jura Mountains, a short jour- ney west of Geneva, and also the birthplace of Victor Hugo — of parentage respectable and simple, but cultured. Wisely appreciating the talent and nature of the son Foreword. 5 Charles, no sacrifice was spared by the parents in the schooling and education of the promise of the family. His subtle yet vivid imagination was nurtured on the legendary lore and wild and impressive scenery of the Jura. While he bended over his Greek and Latin lexicons and read Homer and Caesar, occurred the Terfor — the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday, and all the horrors of French history of the early nineties. In boyhood he personally knew, and boylike, ad- mired St. Just, and the younger Robespierre. The combination of nature and rustic simplicity, his- tory-making days written in battle, murder and sudden death, the lore and superstition of the mountains produced a rare nature — one of naivete and homliness — poetic con- servatism, superstition, boundless 6 Foreword. sympathy, good nature, deep relig- ious feeling and a love for learn- ing, knowledge, and the beautiful. Paul Feval tells a story of the boy, that shows the nature— the story of his first love — in brief, it is this: Nodier at ten years of age became violently and passionately in love with his mother's bosom friend, a middle-aged woman, wrote letters to her, and finally secured a ren- dezvous, and kept it, to his sadness, and received not the accustomed compensation of a rendezvous— but alas, at the hands of the inamorata, the most humiliating of maternal punishments, a sound spanking - indeed, a rude awakening from love's first dream. Nodier said later, "I bore the lady no malice in consequence, but from that day I became constitutionally timid, and for years after never entered into conversation with a woman, Foreword. 7 without the dread of a whipping. ' ' At twenty years of age, the mag- net of Paris drew him — the mag- net that makes Paris, France. For some years he secured a scant livelihood from newspaper work, private secretaryships and tutoring. At twenty-eight, from love and not prudence, he married a portionless girl, and the wisdom and happiness of the marriage are shown from the fact that the wife shed no tears after her marriage until the death of her first-born son. Nodier and his wife at once be- came joint secretaries to an eccen- tric pair, an English lady and gen- tleman, to whom they were both much attached, and whose portraits Nodier has given us in his novel Amdlie. In 181 2, on account of a part taken in a historical play, he was, by Bonaparte, appointed librarian at Laybach, practically to 8 Foreword. exile him. He was soon recalled, and again exile decreed, this time to Odessa, as professor of political economy in the Lycde. Imagine the story-teller, the poet, the hu- morist, as professor of political economy. On his preparation for departure from Paris for Odessa, he sold everything, even his books and collection of butterflies, think- ing that this must be his final exile. But the decree was recalled and he remained at Paris. During the following years he traveled much, visiting Scotland, Italy, Spain, and traveling in Switzerland with Victor Hugo and Lamartine. Twelve years later his troubles ended, his wanderings were complete — he was given the post of arsenal libra- rian at Paris. This was the ideal post for Nodier for the question of breadwinning was settled. The poet, the philosopher, the biblio- Foreword. 9 phile could now grow. Around him gathered at once all there was of wit and wisdom in the one city of light in the early part of the century. Until his death in 1844, his home at the library was the salon of all that was fascinating, aesthetic and charming in French letters. An incident which is in fact a record of the life there has been left by one of his contem- poraries and from it I will adapt rather than translate. It is in Nodier's salon, from eight until ten, — hours of the even- ing always given to conversation, and before the fireplace (in the true Du Maurier pose of our own Sir Frederick Locker-Lampson, if you please), stands Nodier — Nodier with his form long and lank, arms long and slim, hands slender andjf refined ; his face calm, pensive and kindly — his habiliments tasteful lo Foreword. if not always in vogue, with silk flowered vest, high rolling collar— the tips touching the corners of his refined, sensitive mouth — with high neck-cloth, long-skirted coat, and checkered pantaloons; now was Nodier at his best, with La Fayette, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, dream- ing his stories of Italy and Spain, Eugene Delacroix, Boulanger, Balzac, Saint-Beuve, Jules Janin, Liszt, Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Victor Considerant, as an audience. The position before the fireplace was the promise of a tale. Then came his unwritten stories. All was attention. Sto- ries of unrequited love, histories of Vendean conflicts, episodes of the Revolution, the terrors of supersti- tion and witchcraft, and fairy tales of the Jura, the imagination embel- lishing all and creating much. All Foreword. 1 1 were listened to eagerly, with breathless attention, and, when he had finished, silence only broke the spell of his enchantment ; one hesi- tated to applaud — "one likewise stands silent before the beauties and enchantments of nature, or the song of a bird, before a beautiful flower, ' ' or the glow of the sunset sky, catching, holding and reflect- ing the color and glow of the earth. To applaud was to dissipate the charm — to sever the possibility of more to follow. The story ended, then ofttimes Nodier, turning from his place by the chimney, would gently sink into his great arm- chair, and turning to Lamartine or Victor Hugo, say, " Come, enough of prose today, let us have poetry ; ' ' wherefore, without further impor- tuning, one of the poets, without rising from his chair, with elbows resting on the back of another 12 Foreword. chair, or leaning lazily against the wainscoting, would give utterance to delicious verse — tender, pas- sionate or melancholy, as the case might be. All heads were turned to the new direction, all now following the flight of the new thought, which rose as upon the wings of a bird, touched now the mist of the clouds, now up among the blasts of the tempest, and now the burning rays of the sun. Everybody applauded now, and, the applause ended, the rest of the evening from ten until one in the morning was given up to music, dancing and cards, Nodier always being one of the first at the card tables. " Good books come from good bottles," and let us add, from such evenings as Nodier' s salon even- ings. On such occasions he talked his stories, afterwards written; Foreword. 13 and the qualities that made him famous as a story-teller, the charm of the man, the personal magnet- ism, make him quite untranslat- able. Many editions have appeared in French, and always find a ready sale on French book-stalls, but as yet no one has dared to attempt a book of translation. To the French language Nodier was what Poe is to the English, the most successful writer of the short story, the tale to be read at one sitting, without a break in the continuity of the action. Schopenhauer somewhere says that " the short story is a mere conspiracy between the author, printer and publisher to extract the thaler from the reader." Happy the victim of the conspiracy when Nodier is the head conspirator. Story-teller, poet, humorist, critic, journalist, philologer and biblio- phile, what a gamut of talent 14 Foreword. written on the score of genius. A cosmopolitan in life and thought, he assimilated the lore of all peoples; a traveler, yet a lover of home and its attachments ; a vagabond as to thought of the future, saving noth- ing, prodigal of his earnings as of his faculties. His daughter vouches for the story that he sold his library to purchase a trousseau for her upon her marriage. " Novelty, discoveries, the march of civiliza- tion, the progress of industry, all annoyed him. He abhorred rail- roads." The old editions of the old books were his ruling passion, and next to his Elzevirs he loved and adored butterflies. Often at night a moonbeam, or a ray from his night lamp, would show to him one of his beloved books on its shelf, slightly out of place with ref- erence to its neighbors, and noth- ing would suffice but he must needs Foreword. 1 5 get out of bed and put things right. As a training in the construction of good prose, he three times tran- scribed the whole of Rabelais, and Panurge and Pantagruel were his lifelong friends. Politics and scientific subjects were banished from his salon, for people met there to be amused, fascinated, and never in vain ; to hear in the imagination the flutter of the fairies' wings, the breathing of midnight, the voice of the silent hours, the sestheticisms of life's uncertainties; the marvel- ous, the horrible, the supernatural, which are the foundation of his stories. Like a Frenchman of to- day in many respects similar to him, Frangois Copp6e, he never calls forth a blush. All old customs and family traditions were sacred to him. All popular superstitions, such as thirteen at the table, the overturned salt-cellar, Friday, 1 6 Foreword. broken spider webs, were subjects of great terror to him. Nodier's daughter found among his papers after his death, and in his hand- writing, the following memoran- dum, showing his superstitious nature, and his especial superstition regarding the number thirteen : "The 6 Florial 1803 I Dined with Legargue at the Tuileries with twelve people, all there in the prime of life, iive of whom died within one year after, five the next year, and the eleventh and twelfth within ten years, as follows: Arsene d'Arcier | prematurely of Balleydier } disease. Michon ' Madam L. Of grief and misery. Col. D. Of yellow fever. Col. O. Of 24 lance cuts. Col. A. Of a cannon ball. A. and G. In a madhouse. jt. D. In a shipwreck. 3, p. Suicide. jj. Guillotined. The banquet was very gay." His family had good reason to Foreword. 17 remember and respect his supersti- tions. The last time that Nodier dined away from his home, the ar- rival of an unexpected guest disar- ranged the order of the table. No- dier, entering the dining-room, noticed that the number was thir- teen. Turning to his daughter, he said laughingly, ' ' This time I have no fears, God be praised, I am sure of it — I know what it all means. ' ' And when his days of " romance and butterflies, love and poetry ' ' were fast passing away, and the good priest was chanting the death mass, his bed was moved around where his eyes could linger on his beloved Elzevirs, and caressing and loving them to the end, he died, a true bookman in every sense. His life is partially told in the Bibliomaniac, and the death of Theodore was prophetic of Nodier's own death. THE BIBLIOMANIAC, YOU all remember that good fellow Theodore, upon whose grave I have come to strew flowers, praying heaven that the earth may lie lightly upon him. From these hackneyed phrases, which are of course familiar to you, you will learn that I am going to consecrate some pages to him as an obituary notice or funeral oration. It is twenty years since Theo- dore withdrew from society, to work or to be idle, which of the two nobody knew. He dreamed, and no one read his dreams. He passed his life among his books, and occupied himself only with them. This caAised some of his friends to think that Theodore was The Bibliomaniac. 19 writing a book which would make all other books useless; but evi- dently they were all mistaken. Theodore was too much the stu- dent not to know that that book was written three hundred years ago. It is the thirteenth chapter of the first book of Rabelais. Theodore no longer chatted, nor laughed, nor gambled, scarcely ate, and no longer went to balls or to the theatre. The women whom he had loved in his younger days no longer attracted him, or at the most he looked only at their feet ; and when some elegant and beauti- fully-colored boot caught his eye : "Alas," he would say, heaving a deep sigh, " what a waste of good morocco." Formerly he followed the fash- ions. His contemporaries tell us that Theodore was the first to tie his cravat on the left side, notwith- 20 The Bibliomaniac. standing the authority of Garat, who tied his on the right side, and in spite of the common herd which even until today places the knot in the middle. The fashions no lon- ger worried Theodore. In twenty years he had had but one dispute with his tailor. " Sir," he said to him one day, " it will be the last coat I shall receive from you, if you again forget to make my pockets quarto size. Politics, by whose curious chances so many fools make their fortunes, had drawn him from his medita- tions but for a moment. He was in very bad humor over Napoleon's futile expedition to the north, but only because it raised the price of Russia leather; at the same time he hailed with delight the French intervention in the Spanish Revo- lution. He said, " This is a good time to bring chivalric romances The Bibliomaniac. 21 and the Cancioneros from the Penin- sula. ' ' But this never occurred to the expeditionary army, and Theo- dore was piqued. When any one said " Trocadero ' ' to him, he would answer ironically, ' ' Romancer 0, ' ' and then they thought that he was a Liberal. M. de Bourmont's memorable campaign on the African coast transported him with joy. " Thank Heaven," said he, rubbing his hands, " now we will have levant morocco at a reasonable price," and then people thought he was a Carlist. One summer day Theodore was strolling in a crowded street col- lating a book. Some patriotic fellows, staggering with drunken steps from a tavern, commanded him, knife at throat, to cry in the name of freedom, " Long live the Poles. " "I ask nothing better, ' ' 22 The Bibliomaniac. replied Theodore, whose constant thought was an eternal supplica- tion for the human race, " but per- mit me to ask why." "Because we declare war against Holland, which oppresses Poland, under the pretext that the Poles are not friendly to the Jesuits, " replied the friend of freedom, who was a rough geographer, and a fearless logician. "Heaven help us," murmured Theodore, crossing his hands pite- ously, " shall we not then be re- duced to M. Montgolfier's imitation Holland paper? ' ' The friend of freedom answered by breaking Theodore's leg with a blow of his stick. Theodore passed three months in bed, examining book catalogues. He had always been disposed to have extreme emotions, and this reading fevered his blood. Even during his convalescence The Bibliomaniac. 23 his sleep was horribly fretful. One night his wife awakened him from the tortures of nightmare. " You came just in time," said he, catch- ing her in his arms, "to save me from dying of fear and grief. I was surrounded by monsters who would give me no quarter." "And what monsters can you dread, my good friend, you who have never harmed any one? " " It was, if I recollect rightly, the ghost of Purgold, whose fatal shears hacked an inch and a half from the margin of my stitched Aldus, while the ghost of Heudier mercilessly plunged my most beau- tiful editio princeps into a devour- ing acid, and withdrew it as white as an unprinted page ; but I have good reason to think that they are at least both in purgatory. ' ' His wife thought he was speak- ing Greek, for he knew some 24 The Bibliomaniac. Greek, as a proof of which three shelves of his library were filled with Greek books whose leaves had never been cut. He never opened them either, but satisfied himself by showing their sides or backs to his most intimate acquaintances, indicating to them with unruffled assurance, the place where they were printed, the printer's name and the date. The simple-minded concluded from all this strange conduct of Theodore that he was a sorcerer. But I knew better. As he was visibly wasting away, his family called a physician, who was, fortunately, a philosopher and an intelligent man. You will dis- cover if this is not so. The doctor recognized that his patient was threatened with congestion of the brain, and made an elaborate report of the disease in fhe Journal des The Bibliomaniac. 25 Sciences Medicales, where it is de- scribed under the name of morocco monomania, or bibliomaniac's ty- phus : but it was not a proper sub- ject for the Academy of Sciences, because the illness was accom- panied by cholera-morbus. The doctor told him that he must take exercise, and as the idea pleased him, he started out early one day for a walk. I feared to permit him to go alone, so went with him. We turned our steps toward the quays, and this pleased me because I thought that the sight of the river would amuse him ; but he did not get his eyes above the level of the parapets. They were as free from book-stalls as if they had been visited in the early morning by the self-consti- tuted public censors, who in Febru- ary threw into the Seine the library belonging to the residence of the 26 The Bibliomaniac. Archbishop of Paris. We were more fortunate at the Quai aux Fleurs. There were plenty of books here; but such books! All the works that the newspapers had praised during the last month, and which infallibly go from the print- ing shop and the shelves of the bookseller into the fifty cen- time box. Philosophers, historians, poets, novelists, authors of all kinds, and published in all sorts of edi- tions, to whom the most flattering advertisements could not give even a touch of immortality, and whose books, scorned and disdained, pass from the shelves of the book-shop to the banks of the Seine, a deep 'Lith.i where, while turning mol- dy, they meditate upon the certain end of their presumptuous flight, I turned over there the well-worn pages of some of my own octavos, and likewise those of five or six of The Bibliomaniac. 27 my friends. Theodore sighed, but not because he saw the works of my brain exposed to the rain, poorly protected by an oil-cloth cover. " What has become," said Theo- dore, " of the golden age of the outdoor sellers of old books ? It was here, indeed, that my illustrious friend Barbier collected so many treasures, until from them he was able to compose a special bibliog- raphy of several thousand titles. Here it was that the wise Mon- merqu6, on his way to the Palais, and the sage Labouderie, departing from the city, lengthened their ways for long hours, with instruc- tion and profit to them. It was here that the venerable Boulard carried away every day a whole metre of curios, which he measured with his surveyor's cane, and for which there was no room, in his six houses, all stuffed with books. Oh, 28 The Bibliomaniac. how often on such times had he wished for the modest Angulus of Horace, or the elastic cap of the fairies' tent, which were there need thereof, could cover the whole army of Xerxes, and which one might carry in one's belt as easily as the knife sheath of Jeannot's grand- father. Now, alas, one sees only the useless waste paper of this modern literature, that will never become ancient literature, and that lives only twenty-four hours, like the flies of the river Hypanis ! A literature indeed worthy only of the charcoal ink and the pulp paper which are spared to it regretfully by a few disreputable printers, almost as foolish as their books. It is profaning the name of books to give it to these ink-besmeared rags, whose destinies have not even changed in leaving the basket on the rag-picker's shoulders. The The Bibliomaniac. 29 quays are henceforth only the morgue for contemporary celeb- rities. ' ' Theodore sighed again, and I sighed too, but not for the same reason. I was anxious to get him away, for his exaltation, which increased at each step, seemed to threaten him at every moment with a fatal attack. It was indeed an unlucky day, for everything combined to increase his melancholy. "See," he said in passing the pompous shop front of Ladvocat, " the Galiot du Pr^ of the degen- erate literature of the nineteenth century ! an industrious and liberal bookseller, who deserved to have been bom in better times, but whose deplorable activity has cru- elly increased the number of new books to the everlasting injury of the old ; an unpardonable promoter 3© The Bibliomaniac. of cotton-made paper, of illiterate spelling, and namby-pamby engrav- ing ; a fatal guardian of academic prose and fashionable poetry! as if France had produced any poetry since Ronsard, or any prose since Montaigne ! This bookseller's pal- ace is like the Trojan horse, that carried all the ravishers of the Palladium, or Pandora's box which was the entrance way to all the evils of the earth. But for all that, I like this cannibal, and I shall be a chapter in his book, al- though I may never see him again. ' ' " See," continued he, " there is worthy Crozet's shop with the green blinds. Crozet, the most agreeable of our young booksell- ers, the best man in all Paris to distinguish between a binding by Derome the elder and Derome the younger, and the last hope of this last generation of amateurs, if The Bibliomaniac. 31 perchance we should some day re- cover from our barbarity; but I cannot today regale myself by a conversation with him, in which I always learn something. He is in England, where he competes, by way of retaliation, with the rich plunderers of Soho Square and Fleet Street, for the precious frag- ments of the masterpieces of our beautiful language, which have been forgotten for two centuries by the ungrateful land that gave them birth ; Made animo, generose puer!" ' ' There, ' ' he continued, retracing his steps, " there is the Pont-des- Arts, and its balcony with side rails only a few centimetres wide, giving no resting place for the glorious folios of the past three centuries, which with their parch- ment covers and bronze clasps, have delighted the eyes of ten 32 The Bibliomaniac. generations of people; truly an emblematic road, leading from the Palace to the Institute, by a path that is not the usual path of science. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it seems to me that the inven- tion of this kind of a bridge should be a striking revelation to the learned of the decadence of good literature. ' ' "Here," said Theodore, pass- ing, in the Place du Louvre, the white sign of another bookseller, an active and ingenious fellow, ' ' this sign has often given me palpitation of the heart, but I never see it without feelings of pain, since Techener took it upon him- self to reprint the gothic marvels of Jehan Bonfons of Paris, Jehan Ma- reschal of Lyons, and Jehan de Chaney of Avignon, all upon fancy paper, with Tastus type, and under a catchy cover, trifles scarcely ever The Bibliomaniac. 23 found on the market until he brought out large editions in delightful facsimile. Snow-white paper horrifies me, my friend, and there is nothing that I like less ex- cept it be the same paper, when it has received from the stroke of the pressman, in truth the executioner of books, the deplorable imprint of the dreams and follies of this iron age." Theodore sighed constantly; he was going from bad to worse. Talking in this manner we came, in the Rue des Bons-Enfants, to the gorgeous literary bazar where were held Silvestre's auction sales; a place honored by the presence of learned men; and where more priceless curios have succeeded each other during the quarter of a century, than were ever shut up in the library of the Ptolemies, which library perhaps, after all, was not 34 The Bibliomaniac. burned by Omar, whatever our dotard historians may say about it. I had never before seen so many fine volumes displayed. " Unhappy people who have to sell these books, ' ' I said to Theo- dore. " They are dead," he answered, " or it would kill them." But the hall was empty. One could see there only the indefati- gable M. Thour, who was copying with patient exactness, upon cards, carefully prepared, the titles of books which he had omitted the previous day. The happiest man on earth is "he who has collected and carefully catalogued a faithful copy of the title-page of all known books. It would matter nothing so far as he is concerned, if all the productions of printing should be destroyed in the coming revolution which the progress of perfection The Bibliomaniac. 3S promises us. He could bequeath to posterity a complete catalogue of the universal library. He would certainly have an admirable gift of foresight in seeing from such a distance the moment for compiling such an inventory of civilization. A few years more and people will no longer talk about civilization. " God forgive me, my dear Theo- dore, ' ' said the honest M. Silvestre, " you have mistaken the. day. Yesterday was the last day's sale. These books that you see were all sold, and are waiting for the por- ters to carry them away." Theodore staggered and turned pale. His face became the color of old well-used citron morocco. The blow that struck him went to the bottom of my own heart. " Well, it makes no difference," ^ he said, with an altered manner, " I recognize my accustomed bad ^ ^6 The Bibliomaniac. luck in this terrible news. But who owns these pearls, these diamonds, these fantastic riches of which the libraries of Thou and Grolier would have been proud? " " Just as usual, sir," replied M. Silvestre, " these excellent first editions of the classics, these old and perfect copies with the auto- graphs of the celebrated scholars, these stinging philological curios, of which the Academy and the University have never heard, right- fully return to Sir Richard Heber. It is the share of the British lion, to whom we surrender with good grace the classics that we no long- er understand. These fine col- lections of natural history, these masterpieces of workmanship and pictorial art belong to Prince , whose studious tastes ennoble, by their constant use, a great and boundless fortune. These mys- The Bibliomaniac. 37 teries of the middle ages, these everlasting precepts of the moral- ists whose like nowhere exists, these curious dramatic attempts of our ancestors, all these go to in- crease the model library of M. de Soleine. These ancient facetiae, so delicate, so elegant, so enjoy- able, make up the purchases of your amiable friend M. Aime- Martin. I need not tell you who owns these fresh, brilliantly-col- ored morocco bindings, with the triple fillets, wide dentelles and gorgeous panels. He is the Shak- spere of the amateur collectors, the Corneille of melodrama, the clever and often eloquent inter- preter of the passions and virtues of the people, and who after having run down the value of books in the morning, bought them in the even- ing for their weight in gold, not without grinding his teeth, like a 38 The Bibliomaniac. wild boar wounded unto death, and turning upon his rivals his tragic eye, darkened by black eyebrows." Theodore no longer listened. He had just seized a beautiful vol- ume, to which he hurriedly applied his Elzevirometer, a six -inch meas- ure divided almost to infinity, by which he measured the price and, alas, also the intrinsic merit of his books. Ten times he measured the cursed book, verified ten times the crushing calculations, muttered some words that I did not under- stand, finally grew pale, and fell fainting into my arms. It was with difficulty that I got him into the first passing carriage. For a long time I had no success in learning the secret of his sudden grief. He did not speak. He seemed not to hear me. It is the typhus fever, I thought, and the paroxysm of the fever. The Bibliomaniac. 39 I held him in my arms and con- tinued to question him. Finally he answered me. " You see in me," he said, " the most unhappy of men. That vol- ume is the large-paper 1676 Virgil, of which I thought I had the larg- est copy known, and this one is taller than mine by the third of a line. Unfriendly or prejudiced people might even stretch it to half a line. A third of a line, good God!" I was confounded. I saw that the delirium was gaining upon him. " A third of aline," he repeated, shaking his fist at the heavens, like Ajax or Capaneus. I trembled in my entire body. Little by little he fell into deep depression. The poor man lived only to suffer. He spoke only to mutter from time to time, "The third of a line," and wrung his hands. 40 The Bibliomaniac. I said in an undertone, " A plague upon books and typhus fever." "Calm yourself, my friend," I whispered in his ear, each time the paroxysm broke out afresh. ' ' A third of a line is not a great thing even in the most particular matters of life." " Not a great thing," he cried, " a third of a line in the 1676 Vir- gil ! It was the third of a line that raised the price of the Nerli Homer at M. de Cotte's sale an hundred louis. Do you think that the third of a line is nothing in the dagger that pierces your heart? " His expression suddenly changed. His arms became rigid, his legs were seized by cramps, as in an iron vise. The fever was evidently reaching the extremities. I would not have cared to increase, by even the third of a line, the short The Bibliomaniac. 41 distance that separated us from his home. We finally arrived there. " A third of a line, ' ' he said to the con- cierge. "A third of a line," he said to the cook who opened the door. " A third of a line," he said to his wife, flooding her with tears. "My parrot has escaped," sobbed his little daughter. "Why did you leave the cage open?" replied Theodore, adding, "A third of aline." " There is a rebellion in the south, and a riot iu the Rue du Cadran, ' ' said the old aunt who was reading the evening paper. " What the devil are the people getting themselves mixed up in now?" answered Theodore, and reiterated, " A third of a line." " Your farmhouse at la Beauce has been burned," said his servant to him, as he put him in bed. 42 The Bibliomaniac, "It should be rebuilt," said Theodore, " if it's worth the ex- pense. A third of a line. " " Do you think this is a danger- ous illness? " the nurse asked me. " I see, my good woman, that you have never read the Journal des Sciences Medicales. Don't you understand that you should not delay in getting a priest? " Fortunately — at that very mo- ment, the cur^ came in to chat a little, as was his custom, about the thousand literary and bibliograph- ical trifles, from which his religious studies had not completely dis- tracted him ; but he thought of none of them when he felt Theodore's pulse. "Alas, my child," he said to Theodore, " the life of man is but a transition, and the world itself is not set upon everlasting founda- tions. It must end, like all things that have a beginning." The Bibliomaniac. 43 " Have you read upon that sub- ject," answered Theodore, "'A Treatise on the World, Its Origin and Antiquity?' " " I take my knowledge on that subject from the book of Genesis," said the venerable pastor, "but I have heard it said that a sophist of the last century, M. de Mirabeau, wrote a book on this subject. ' ' ^^ Sub j'udice lis est," Theodore interrupted, brusquely. " I have proved in my Stromates that the first two parts of Le Monde were written by that melancholy pedant, Mirabeau, and the third by the Abb6 Lemascrier. " "Ah, heavens!" said the Old aunt, taking off her spectacles, " who was it then that made Amer- ica?" " That is not the question now," said the cur6. " Do you believe in the Trinity? " 44 The Bibliomaniac. " How could I disbelieve that famous volume by Servetus, * De Trinitate, ' ' ' said Theodore, half raising himself on his pillow; " es- pecially when I, ipsissimis oculis, have seen sold at the MacCarthy sale, for the beggarly sum of 215 francs, a beautiful copy which at the sale of the La Vallifere collec- tion brought 700 francs?" " We do not stick to the point," said the apostle, somewhat discon- certed. " Tell me, my son, what do you believe concerning the divinity of Jesus Christ? " "Quite right," said Theodore; " the only question is what you un- derstand by that. I shall maintain against every one that the Toldos- Jeschu from which that ignorant lampoon of Voltaire's has taken so many of its foolish fables, fit only for the Thousand and One Nights, is nothing but inane, rabbinical The Bibliomaniac. 45 falsehood, not worthy to be in the library of any scholar." "Well and good," sighed the worthy ecclesiastic. " At least, " Theodore continued, " unless some day some one should discover a copy in ckartd maximd, of which, if my memory is right, there is some mention in the badly arranged bibliographical work of David Clement. ' ' The cur6 groaned, this time audibly, and, much agitated, raised himself from his chair and bent over Theodore, to make him fully understand, without circumlocution or equivocation, that he was enter- ing the last stage of the disease known in the Journal des Sciences Medicates as the bibliomaniac's typhus, and that he should now think of nothing but his eternal salvation. Theodore had never cut himself 46 The Bibliomaniac. off from life by that insolent nega- tion of unbelievers which is the science of fools ; but in the study of books the dear man had put too much stress upon the letter to well comprehend the spirit. Even in good health a doctrine would give him a fever, or a dogma an attack of lockjaw. In theological ethics he would have knocked under to a Saint-Simon. He turned his face to the wall. For a long time he did not speak, and we would have believed him dead had I not, in bending over him, heard him murmur feebly, "A third of a line! God of pity and justice! but where will you give me back that third of a line, and to what extent can your omnipotent power retrieve the irre- parable blunder of that binder? "■ One of his fellow bibliophiles came in a moment later. They The Bibliomaniac. 47 told him that Theodore was in ex- tremis, and that he was so delirious that he believed that the Abb^ Le- mascrier had made the third part of the world, and that a quarter of an hour ago he had lost his power of speech. " I am going to assure myself of that," said the amateur; and ap- proaching Theodore, he continued: " by what mistake in pagination do we recognize the genuine 1635 Elzevir edition of Caesar? ' ' "153 for 149." " Very good. And the Terence of the same year? ' ' "108 for 104." " The devil! " I said; " the Elze- virs played in bad luck that year with their figures. They did well , not to print their logarithms at the same time." "Marvellous!" continued Theo- dore's friend. " Had I listened to 48 The Bibliomaniac. these people here, I should have believed you were at the point of death." ' ' A third of a line, ' ' replied Theo- dore, his voice continually growing weaker. " I know your story, but it is nothing in comparison with mine. Imagine my loss, eight days ago, in one of those bastard, nameless sales of which one learns only by a placard on the door, — a Boccaccio of 1527, — quite as good as yours, with the Venetian vellum binding, with the pointed A's as witnesses of its authenticity, and not a single leaf repaired. ' ' All Theodore's faculties concen- trated upon one thought: "Are you indeed sure that the A's were pointed? " " As pointed as the iron tip of a lancer's halberd." " It was then without doubt the Vintisettine edition itself." The Bibliomaniac. 49 " Its very self. We were having a fine dinner that day; charming women, fresh oysters, witty people, and champagne. I reached the sale three minutes after it was knocked down by the auctioneer. ' ' "Sir," cried Theodore, furious- ly, " when the Vintisettine is going to be sold one does not dine ! ' ' This last effort exhausted what of life was left in him, until now sustained by the excitement of the conversation, as the bellows keeps alive the dying spark. He lisped once more, "A third of a line." They were his last words. When we had given up all hope of his recovery, we pushed his bed near his book-shelves, from which we took down, one by one, each volume for which he seemed to ask with longing glance of his eyes, holding the longer before his eyes those that we thought would please 50 The Bibliomaniac. him most. He died at midnight, lying between a Deseuil and a Padeloup, his hands fondly clasp- ing a Thouvenin. The following day we led his funeral procession, made up of a great crowd of weeping morocco- leather polishers, and we placed upon his tomb a stone carved with an appropriate inscription, which he had parodied for himself from Franklin's epitaph : MERE LIES IN nSWOODEM BINDING A fOLio oopr I Of TtlEBEST EDITION OP MAN lEN INmC lANOUAOE OMOOUlENACt IvmlCnTHEWOBLONOlONfiEn UNDERStANBSl iXBMBXWBMXIHWaiXE TODAY IT IS AN OLD BOOK DAMAOED SEMNEDANDIMPCRFECr 1 TtlEimEPAOEOONE WORM EATEN AND BADUr INJURED BY DECAy WEDARBNOTMOPEFOR IT VTt TARBYAND U3EIISS MONORy OP A RETRINT 9 ? *^ R O W t ? ? F A N 9 ? ?- T I A