no more about it, by making off and hiding my head in my hands, like a man crushed by the weight of his remorse, I might disarm this wrath.  I tried to think so.  But I knew well enough that there was more to come.  I had hardly taken my seat when, looking up, I could see between my fingers the little man standing up and gesticulating beside one of the keepers.  At one moment he rapped the damning page with his forefinger; the next, he turned sidewise and flung out a hand toward me; and I divined, without hearing a word, all the bitterness of his invective.  The keeper appeared to take it seriously.  I felt myself blushing.  “There must be,” thought I, “some law against ink-stains, some decree, some regulation, something drawn up for the protection of Early Texts.  And the penalty is bound to be terrible, since it has been enacted by the learned; expulsion, no doubt, besides a fine—­an enormous fine.  They are getting ready over there to fleece me.  That book of reference they are consulting is of course the catalogue of the sale where this treasure was purchased.  I shall have to replace the Early Text!  O Uncle Mouillard!”

I sat there, abandoned to my sad reflections, when one of the attendants, whom I had not seen approaching, touched me on the shoulder.

“The keeper wishes to speak to you.”

I rose up and went.  The terrible reader had gone back to his seat.

“It was you, sir, I believe, who blotted the folio just now?”

“It was, sir.”

“You did not do so on purpose?”

“Most certainly not, sir!  I am indeed sorry for he accident.”

“You ought to be.  The volume is almost unique; and the blot, too, for that matter.  I never saw such a blot!  Will you, please, leave me your Christian name, surname, profession, and address?”

I wrote down, “Fabien Jean Jacques Mouillard, barrister, 91 Rue de Rennes.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, that is all for the present.  But I warn you that Monsieur Charnot is exceedingly annoyed.  It might be as well to offer him some apology.”

“Monsieur Charnot?”

“Yes.  It is Monsieur Charnot, of the Institute, who was reading the Early Text.”

“Merciful Heavens!” I ejaculated, as I went back to my seat; “this must be the man of whom my tutor spoke, the other day!  Monsieur Flamaran belongs to the Academy of Moral and Political Science, the other to the Institute of Inscriptions and the Belles-Lettres.  Charnot?  Yes, I have those two syllables in my ear.  The very last time I saw Monsieur Flamaran he let fall ’my very good friend Charnot, of the ‘Inscriptions.’  They are friends.  And I am in a pretty situation; threatened with I don’t know what by the Library—­for the keeper told me positively that this was all ’for the present’—­but not for the future; threatened to be disgraced in my tutor’s eyes; and all because this learned man’s temper is upset.