written in Spanish, or to be more accurate,
Catalan; and," I added rather maliciously, "I'm afraid you won't get
much of a fortune out of Quaritch for it, as there seems to be nothing
here except the merest tittle-tattle."

His face lengthened for a moment at the idea, but the old cocksure
manner came back again, and he pooh-poohed my valuation with lofty
superiority.

"I presume you are not an expert in such matters as these--er--Mr.
Cospatric? No, of course not; it couldn't be expected. But let me
assure you that I did not make this outlay with my eyes shut. Trust me
for knowing what I was about." He turned over some dozen of the yellow
pages, looking at them curiously. "That _y_ there standing by
itself means 'and.' H'm, yes. The thing's clear enough when one looks
into it. I don't profess to translate this old MS. at sight. You see
the--ar--the writing's crabbed; and my time is too much occupied to
study it carefully. No, I shall just sell the thing to the man I
mentioned as it stands. To return to what I was telling you about the
use of tobacco, though. Whether you consider the matter from a
scientific or merely from a rational point of view----" And away he
steamed again, whilst I conned over the tangled quill-work.

My inattention was purposely obvious. I had got thoroughly sick of the
man, and wanted to drive him away. But he had only his own society to
fall back upon, and he had evidently the good taste to object strongly
to that. And so he preached on.

There was only one other person at our end of the _caffe_, a dark,
good-looking man with blue spectacles, who sat at an adjoining table
with an _Eco d'Italia_ before him, sipping cognac and sugar. But
when Weems tried to drag him into conversation, the curse of the Tower
of Babel applied the _cloture_, and, "Ignorant lot, these
Italians," said the schoolmaster, going on to show with many statistics
and arguments that English, being founded on dead languages, was
irrevocably destined by the Fates to become the universal tongue of all
terrestrial peoples.

I looked at the clock. Half an hour yet before the doors of the Carlo
Felice opened. The steep street outside was wet and miserable. I went
back to turning over the old book. The pages were a queer medley,
superbly uninteresting most of them, and tedious to spell out. There
were the usual Spanish flourishes of lettering and expression, and when
one had winnowed away all this chaff, it needed a great deal