ks lay scattered about
pell-mell, some lying flat, some standing upright. A number of quartos
were heaped up in a tottering pile. Two Greek lexicons, one inside the
other, formed a single being more monstrous in shape than the human
couples of the divine Plato. A gilt-edged folio was all a-gape, showing
three of its leaves disgracefully dog's-eared.

Having, after an interval of some moments, recovered from his profound
amazement, the librarian went up to the table and recognised in the
confused mass his most valuable Hebrew, French, and Latin Bibles, a
unique Talmud, Rabbinical treatises printed and in manuscript, Aramaic
and Samaritan texts and scrolls from the synagogues--in fine, the most
precious relics of Israel all lying in a disordered heap, gaping and
crumpled.

Monsieur Sariette found himself confronted with an inexplicable
phenomenon; nevertheless he sought to account for it. How eagerly he
would have welcomed the idea that Monsieur Gaetan, who, being a
thoroughly unprincipled man, presumed on the right gained him by his
fatal liberality towards the library to rummage there unhindered during
his sojourns in Paris, had been the author of this terrible disorder.
But Monsieur Gaetan was away travelling in Italy. After pondering for
some minutes Monsieur Sariette's next supposition was that Monsieur Rene
d'Esparvieu had entered the library late in the evening with the keys of
his manservant Hippolyte, who, for the past twenty-five years, had
looked after the second floor and the attics. Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu,
however, never worked at night, and did not read Hebrew. Perhaps,
thought Monsieur Sariette, perhaps he had brought or allowed to be
brought to this room some priest, or Jerusalem monk, on his way through
Paris; some Oriental _savant_ given to scriptural exegesis. Monsieur
Sariette next wondered whether the Abbe Patouille, who had an enquiring
mind, and also a habit of dog's-earing his books, had, peradventure,
flung himself on these talmudic and biblical texts, fired with sudden
zeal to lay bare the soul of Shem. He even asked himself for a moment
whether Hippolyte, the old manservant, who had swept and dusted the
library for a quarter of a century, and had been slowly poisoned by the
dust of accumulated knowledge, had allowed his curiosity to get the
better of him, and had been there during the night, ruining his eyesight
and his reason, and losing his soul poring by moonlight over these
undecipherab