should escape him. As the guardian of three hundred and sixty thousand
volumes, he had three hundred and sixty thousand reasons for alarm.
Sometimes he woke at night bathed in sweat, and uttering a cry of fear,
because he had dreamed he had seen a gap on one of the shelves of his
bookcases. It seemed to him a monstrous, unheard-of, and most grievous
thing that a volume should leave its habitat. This noble rapacity
exasperated Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu, who, failing to understand the
good qualities of his paragon of a librarian, called him an old maniac.
Monsieur Sariette knew nought of this injustice, but he would have
braved the cruellest misfortune and endured opprobrium and insult to
safeguard the integrity of his trust. Thanks to his assiduity, his
vigilance and zeal, or, in a word, to his love, the Esparvienne library
had not lost so much as a single leaflet under his supervision during
the sixteen years which had now rolled by, this ninth of September,
1912.

CHAPTER III

WHEREIN THE MYSTERY BEGINS

At seven o'clock on the evening of that day, having as usual replaced
all the books which had been taken from their shelves, and having
assured himself that he was leaving everything in good order, he quitted
the library, double-locking the door after him. According to his usual
habit, he dined at the _Cremerie des Quatre Eveques_, read his
newspaper, _La Croix_, and at ten o'clock went home to his little house
in the Rue du Regard. The good man had no trouble and no presentiment of
evil; his sleep was peaceful. The next morning at seven o'clock to the
minute, he entered the little room leading to the library, and,
according to his daily habit, doffed his grand frock-coat, and taking
down an old one which hung in a cupboard over his washstand, put it on.
Then he went in to his workroom, where for sixteen years he had been
cataloguing six days out of the seven, under the lofty gaze of Alexandre
d'Esparvieu. Preparing to make a round of the various rooms, he entered
the first and largest, which contained works on theology and religion
in huge cupboards whose cornices were adorned with bronze-coloured busts
of poets and orators of ancient days.

Two enormous globes representing the earth and the heavens filled the
window-embrasures. But at his first step Monsieur Sariette stopped dead,
stupefied, powerless alike to doubt or to credit what his eyes beheld.
On the blue cloth cover of the writing-table boo