hurriedly measured with his Elzevirometer, a six-inch measure divided almost to infinity, by which he regulated the price, and, alas! the intrinsic merit also, of his books. He measured the accursed book ten times and as many times verified the troublesome calculation, muttered some words that I did not understand, finally changed color, and fainted in my arms. I had great difficulty in getting him into a passing carriage. [Illustration] For a long time my attempts to learn the cause of his sudden grief were futile. He did not speak. He did not hear my words. It is the typhus fever, I thought, and the crisis of the fever. I held him in my arms. I continued to question him. At last he spoke. “You see in me,” he said, “the most unhappy of men. That book is the 1676 Virgil, on large paper, of which I thought that I had the best example known, and yet this is taller than mine, by the third of a line.[9] Prejudiced or spiteful minds might even call it half a line. A third of a line, good God!” I was confounded. I saw that the delirium was increasing. “A third of a line,” he repeated, shaking his fist furiously in the air like Ajax or Capaneus. All my limbs trembled. He gradually fell into a state of deep depression. The poor man lived only to suffer. He repeated from time to time, “The third of a line!” and wrung his hands, while I kept saying, in an undertone, “Confusion to books and typhus fever!” “Calm yourself, my friend,” I whispered gently in his ear, each time the paroxysm was renewed. “A third of a line is not much, even in the most particular things of life.” “Not much?” he cried; “a third of a line in the 1676 Virgil! It was the third of a line that raised the price of the Nerli Homer at M. de Cotte’s[10] a hundred louis. A third of a line! Ah! would you count the third of a line nothing in the length of a dagger that pierced your heart?” His expression again wholly changed, his arms became rigid, his legs were seized with cramps as in a vise. The typhus was visibly reaching the extremities. I did not desire to lengthen by even the third of a line the short distance that separated us from the house. At last we arrived there. “A third of a line,” he said to the concierge. “A third of a line,” he said to the cook, who opened the door. “A third of a line,” he said to his wife, with a flood of tears. “My parrot has flown away!” cried his little girl, likewise weeping. “Why did you leave the cage open?” replied Theodore. “A third of a line!” [Illustration] “There is an uprising in the South and in the Rue du Cadran,” said the old aunt, who was reading the evening paper. “What the devil are the people meddling with?” answered Theodore. “A third of a line!” “Your farm at la Beauce has been burned,” said his servant in putting him to bed. [Illustration] “It must be rebuilt,” said Theodore, “if it is worth the trouble. A third of a line!” “Do you think that this is serious?” the nurse asked me.