"Damnation!" murmured Lowrich, after having run his eye, as was his wont, over the unfamiliar treasure. Then he turned to me, but very different from what he had been the moment before, his arms hanging down at his side, his eye downcast, his forehead pale. "Damnation!" he muttered in French in a voice hardly raised and so that he could only be heard by me. "It's that damn book that I undertook to give you if it was here, the first edition of the Poliphilus... It's here, the traitor, and as fine as if it had just been printed. Things like this only happen to me..." "Calm down," I answered, laughing. "Perhaps we'll get it for a price less than you think. And how much is Master Apostolo asking for this rarity?" "Ah!" said Apostolo. "Times are hard and money is scarce. In times gone by I'd have asked fifty zecchini for it from Prince Eugene, sixty from the Duke of Abrantès, and a hundred from an Englishman. But today I have to give it away for four hundred wretched Milan pounds, or the exact equivalent of four hundred French francs. I can't even knock two quarantani off the price." "May four hundred starving rats devour your books from first to last!" Lowrich interrupted furiously. "Who the devil has ever had four hundred francs asked of them for a bad book?" "How dare you call this a bad book!" Apostolo spat back, almost as agitated as Lowrich. "It's a first edition of 1467, the first to appear in Treviso, and perhaps in Italy, a true masterpiece of typography and engraving, the illustrations in which can only be attributed to Raphael, an admirable work, the name of whose author has remained a mystery up until now, despite all erudite research, a one-off, or almost unique, that you yourself, abbot, perhaps did not know existed. And it pleases you to call that a bad book!" Lowrich had calmed down during this vehement tirade. He had quietly sat down, placing his hat on the bookseller's table, and was wiping the sweat from his brow like a man exhausted by long and hard effort who has just found a good place to rest at his leisure.