“In all the assemblage of human atoms that inhabit this vessel,” said he, “there is but one who is imbued with reverence for the past and a sense of the preciousness of the unique.  I need not tell you, Herr Baronet, who are a scholar, that of this book only two copies exist in this ink-sodden universe.  One is in the University Library of Bologna; the other is before your eyes.  It is also the only book known to have been printed by Magniagus.  See the beautiful, small Roman type—­a masterpiece.  Ach, Herr Baronet! to have accomplished one such work in a lifetime, and then to sit among the blessed saints and look down on earth and know that the two sole copies in existence are cherished by the elect, what a reward, what eternal happiness!”

I turned over the pages.  The faint perfume of mouldy lore ascended and I remembered the smell of the “Histoire des Uscoques” in the Embankment Gardens.

“The odor di femina in the nostrils of the scholar,” said I.

“Famina? Woman?” he cried, scandalised.

“Yes, my friend,” said I.  “All things sublunar can be translated into terms of woman.  St. Fliscus wrote because he hadn’t a wife; Simon Magniagus stopped printing because he got married and devoted his existence to reproducing himself instead of St. Fliscus.”

“Ach, that is very interesting,” said he.  “Could you tell me the date of Magniagus’s marriage?”

“I never heard of him till this moment, my dear Herr Doctor.  But depend upon it, he was either married or was going to be married, and she ran away from him and left him without the heart to print for posterity, and when he took his seat among the saints she said she was so glad; he was a stupid old ink-sodden fellow!”

He departed sorrowingly from the deck, clasping the precious volume to his heart.  Allusive or discursive speech scared him like indecency; and I had used his gem but as a peg whereon flauntingly to hang it.  It took me three days to tame him and to induce him to show me another of his treasures, recently acquired in Athens.  Ioannes Georgius Godelmann’s Tractate de Lamiis, printed by Nicholas Bassaeus of Frankfurt.  I read him Keats’s poem about the young lady of Corinth, of which he had never heard.  His mental attitude towards it was the indulgent one of an old diplomatist towards a child’s woolly lamb.  For him literature had never existed and printing ended in the year 1600.  But I was sorry when he left me at Constantinople, where he counted on striking the track of a Bohemian herbal, printed at Prague, and never more to be read by any of the sons of man.  In the summer he was going book-hunting in Iceland.  By chance I have learned since that he died there.  Peace to his ashes!  For aught I could see he dwelt in a mild stupor of happiness, absorbed in the intoxication of a tremulous pursuit.  I wondered whether his soul contained that antidote—­the odor di femina.  Perhaps he met it at Reykjavic and he died of dismay.