“Look,” he continued, “there is Crozet’s store with the green walls. He is the most agreeable of our young booksellers, the man of all Paris who can best distinguish between a binding by Derome the elder and Derome the younger, and the last hope of a passing generation of amateurs, if the cult of old books should return in the midst of our barbarity. But I shall not enjoy his conversation to-day, even though I always learn something from it. He is in England, where he is competing, by the right of retaliation, with the greedy usurers of Soho Square and Fleet Street for the precious fragments of the monuments of our beautiful language which have been forgotten for two centuries on the ungrateful soil that produced them. _Macte animo, generoso puer!_...” “Here,” he said, retracing his steps,--“here is the Pont-des-Arts, with its useless side-rails only a few centimeters wide, affording no support for the noble folios of three centuries, majestic volumes with pigskin covers and bronze clasps, which have delighted the eyes of ten generations. This is truly an emblematic bridge, leading from the Palais to the Institute by a path which is not the path of science. I do not know whether I am mistaken, but the invention of a bridge of this kind should be a startling illustration to the erudite of the decadence of good literature.” [Illustration] “There,” said Theodore, passing the white sign of an active and ingenious bookseller in the Place du Louvre, “that sign has made my heart palpitate for a long time; but I no longer see it without a sensation of pain, since Techener has reprinted with Tastu’s characters, on showy paper, and under an enticing cover, the gothic marvels of Jehan Bonfons of Paris, Jehan Mareschal of Lyons, and Jehan de Chaney of Avignon, unobtainable trifles until he produced them in delightful facsimile. Snow-white paper fills me with horror, my friend; and there is nothing that I like less, except this same paper when it has received from the stroke of a cruel pressman, the deplorable imprint of the visions and idiocies of this iron age.” Theodore sighed more frequently, and was rapidly growing worse. We thus came in the Rue des Bons-Enfants, to the literary bazaar where Silvestre held his auction sales. It was a place honored by learned men, which has seen more priceless curios during a quarter of a century than the library of the Ptolemies ever held (which library perhaps was not burned by Omar, whatever our twaddling historians may say). I had never seen so many splendid books on exhibition. [Illustration] “Unfortunate people who have to sell them,” I said to Theodore. “They are dead,” he said, “or it would kill them.”