ime when your
books were disarranged every night, how armfuls disappeared, how they
were dragged about, turned over, ruined, and sent rolling helter-skelter
as far as the gutter in the Rue Palatine. Those were great days! Point
out to me, Monsieur Sariette, the books which suffered most."

This proposition threw Monsieur Sariette into a melancholy stupor, and
Maurice had to repeat his request three times before he could make the
aged librarian understand. At length he pointed to a very ancient Talmud
from Jerusalem as having been frequently touched by those unseen hands.
An apocryphal Gospel of the third century, consisting of twenty papyrus
sheets, had also quitted its place time after time. Gassendi's
Correspondence too seemed to have been well thumbed.

"But," added Monsieur Sariette, "the book to which the mysterious
visitant devoted the most particular attention was undoubtedly a little
copy of _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of Philippe de Vendome, Grand
Prieur de France, with autograph annotations by Voltaire, who, as is
well known, frequently visited the Temple in his younger days. The
fearsome reader who caused me such terrible anxiety never grew weary of
this _Lucretius_ and made it his bedside book, as it were. His taste was
sound, for it's a gem of a thing. Alas! the monster made a blot of ink
on page 137 which perhaps the chemists with all the science at their
disposal will be powerless to erase."

And Monsieur Sariette heaved a profound sigh. He repented having said
all this when young d'Esparvieu asked him for the loan of the precious
_Lucretius_. Vainly did the jealous custodian affirm that the book was
being repaired at the binder's and was not available. Maurice made it
clear that he wasn't to be taken in like that. He strode resolutely into
the abode of the philosophers and the globes and seating himself in an
arm-chair said:

"I am waiting."

Monsieur Sariette suggested his having another edition. There were some
that, textually, were more correct, and were, therefore, preferable from
the student's point of view. He offered him Barbou's edition, or
Coustelier's, or, better still, a French translation. He could have the
Baron des Coutures' version--which was perhaps a little
old-fashioned--or La Grange's, or those in the Nisard and Panckouke
series; or, again, there were two versions of striking elegance, one in
verse and the other in prose, both from the pen of Monsieur de
Pongerville of the