has been
artistically chosen with a view to prolonging my stay in Paris: "On the
'Latini Juniani.'" Yes, gentle reader, a new subject, almost incapable of
elucidation, having no connection--not the remotest--with the exercise of
any profession whatsoever, entirely devoid of practical utility. The
trouble it gives me is beyond conception.

It is true that I intersperse my researches with some more attractive
studies, and one or two visits to the picture-galleries, and more than an
occasional evening at the theatre. My uncle knows nothing of this. To
keep him soothed I am careful to get my reader's ticket renewed every
month, and every month to send him the ticket just out of date, signed by
M. Leopold Delisle. He has a box full of them; and in the simplicity of
his heart Monsieur Mouillard has a lurking respect for this nephew, this
modern young anchorite, who spends his days at the National Library, his
nights with Gaius, wholly absorbed in the Junian Latins, and indifferent
to whatsoever does not concern the Junian Latins in this Paris which my
uncle still calls the Modern Babylon.

I came down this morning in the most industrious mood, when the
misfortune befell. Close by the sanctum where the librarians sit are two
desks where you write down the list of the books you want. I was doing so
at the right-hand desk, on which abuts the first row of tables. Hence all
the mischief. Had I written at the left-hand desk, nothing would have
happened. But no; I had just set down as legibly as possible the title,
author, and size of a certain work on Roman Antiquities, when, in
replacing the penholder, which is attached there by a small brass chain,
some inattentiveness, some want of care, my ill-luck, in short, led me to
set it down in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the desk. It tumbled-I
heard the little chain rattle-it tumbled farther-then stopped short. The
mischief was done. The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had detached an
enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that drop--Ah! I can
see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk, that small,
white-haired man, so thin and so very angry!

"Clumsy idiot! To blot an Early Text!"

I leaned over and looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated
capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the original sphere
had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted
lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next