xistence. But the prisoner's counsel retorted by putting in evidence
attested affirmation that a second copy was in France.

Up to this moment Vincente had maintained an imperturbable calm; but on
hearing his counsel's plea he burst into tears. In the end, Don Vincente
was condemned to be strangled, and when asked if he had anything more to
urge, all he could utter, sobbing violently, was, 'Ah! your worship,
_my copy was not unique_!'

Cousin Pons and Don Vincente are extreme instances of bibliomaniacs to
whom the possession of a book was the supreme happiness of life. The man
of Fiction and the man of Fact were at one in this passion of
acquisitiveness. Don Vincente was compelled by hunger--_mala suada
fames_--to become a book _seller_; and if it became a general rule for
book-collectors to become booksellers there would, we venture to think,
be a very material increase in police-court and, perhaps, criminal cases
generally. Mr. G. A. Sala tells us an amusing story of the late
Frederick Guest Tomlins, a historian and journalist of repute. In the
autumn of his life Tomlins decided to set up as a bookseller. He
purposed to deal chiefly in mediaeval literature, in which he was
profoundly versed. The venture was scarcely successful. A customer
entered his shop one day and asked for a particular book, as marked in
the catalogue. 'I had really no idea it was there,' meditatively
remarked Mr. Tomlins, as he ascended a ladder to a very high shelf and
pulled out a squabby little tome. Then he remained about five-and-twenty
minutes on the ladder absorbed in the perusal of the volume, when the
customer, growing impatient, began to rap on the counter with his stick.
Thereupon Mr. Tomlins came down the ladder. 'If you think,' he remarked,
with calm severity, to the intending purchaser, 'that any considerations
of vile dross will induce me to part with this rare and precious little
volume, you are very much mistaken. It is like your impudence. Be off
with you!' A not altogether dissimilar anecdote is related by Lord
Lytton in that curious novel 'Zanoni,' in which one of the characters is
an old bookseller who, after years of toil, succeeded in forming an
almost perfect library of works on occult philosophy. Poor in everything
but a genuine love for the mute companions of his old age, he was
compelled to keep open his shop, and trade, as it were, in his own
flesh. Let a customer enter, and his countenance fell; let him depart
empty-