quiet efficiency, his sober sense, and his
deliberate renunciation of the glory of romance, was not as logical a
product of our modern age as the corporation he served.

"You serve both God and Mammon," I remarked as the soda-water splashed
into the glass. He nodded, smiling.

"Yes," he said, "or rather let us call it rendering unto Caesar. After
all, something must bend if you are going to make ends meet. Caesar," he
added, lifting up his glass, "isn't such a bad proposition when you have
a family to provide for."

I agreed that this was so and scanned the books on the shelves. They at
least were a noble company, their gold and green and blue broken by the
plain yellow paper backs of Italian books. Shakespeare was there and St.
Francis of Assisi; _Fors Clavigera_ in a cabinet edition; Symonds'
_Renaissance_ and Pater in wide-margined dignity. Tucked in corners,
too, were books in that quaint pocket edition of the _Bibliotheque
Nationale_: _Rabelais_, in five volumes, Beaumarchais' _Memoirs_,
Rousseau, Scarron's _Travesty of Virgil_ and that extraordinary work of
genius, The _Maxims_ of La Rochefoucauld. As I turned them over I saw on
their pages the purple rubber-stamps of some bookseller in Tunis,
Bizerta, Tangier, and other places even more obscure. I had a vision of
the man making his way, in some perspiration, through the press of Arabs
and Moors to the little shop under the arches. I saw him scanning the
shelves, the Derby hat pushed back, the vest open, the thumb and finger
pinching the lower lip.... I turned to him with a worn copy of _Heine_
in my hand.

"I think," I said, "I must fit out an expedition, to go and dredge the
Java Sea for that manuscript you threw overboard."

"No," he replied, settling in his chair. "It wouldn't be worth it."

"We don't often find a man who could do it," I said.

"That's because they lack balance. The mistake artists and literary
people make is, they think that because a thing is priceless, we can't
do without it. I think it's a mistake. Someone pays half-a-million
dollars for a Turner, say. Well, even if it was burnt up, lost
overboard, what of it? It can be done again."

"Do you think so?" I asked. I was glad Mac did not hear this.

"Certainly!" replied Mr. Carville. "Everything's been done, which is a
sound argument for supposing it can be done again. There's plenty of men
doing much better than they did in olden times. I can't see much sense
in the theory that beca