*

  In the library Ludwig usually had sorted in the morning and read in the afternoons. And read the day's notes in the evening. And penetrated new books during the wee hours. He kept it up for long hours and told himself repeatedly that it worked.

  The work was a straitjacket for the tanks16. He feared the day when they like a Mel Gibson would hit the wall and get out, run amok, turn up the memory films to the max.

  The order was quite different now than when Ludwig came to the room. All books, he counted 150, laid in neat piles on the large table in the middle of the chamber. He had been given permission by August to organize them that way without having to put the books back in their original places every night.

  It took several days before he decided how he would group the books. He had no help from August who refused to answer questions about the books. After careful consideration, he decided. Systematically, he went through all the books and put them into groups according to which periods the books were about.

  At last there were ten stacks and ten epochs relating to each era in general or specific authors with different number of books in each.

  He stacked the piles chronologically from left to right with the epochs written on pieces of paper on top of the piles:

  1.Pharaoh. These books were about the oldest period of the New Kingdom, a period between 1 500 BC and 1300 BC

  2.Archaic.

  3.Classical.

  4.Platonian. Ludwig had to break out the platonic literature to its own pile even though the period was classical.

  5.Cicero.

  6.The Church Fathers. The books were especially about Augustine but also about Ambrosius and Clement of Alexandria.

  7.Boethius.

  8.Bacon and Ockham.

  9.Ficino and Mirandola.

  10.Giordano Bruno.