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  The jaguar on the right seized a heavy stone wedge and drove it into the victim's heart. One edge of it clove sharp through the breast bone. Kien closed his eyes, dazzled. He thought, the blood must spirt up to the very sky; he sternly disapproved of this medieval barbarism. He waited until he thought the blood must have ceased to flow, then opened his eyes. Oh horrible: from the cleft victim's wounded breast a book appeared, another, a third, many. There was no end to it, they fell to the ground, they were clutched at by viscous flames. The blood had set fire to the wood, the books were burning. 'Shut your breast!' shouted Kien to the prisoner, 'Shut your breast!' He gesticulated with his hands; 'you must do it like this, quickly, quickly!' The prisoner understood; with a terrific jerk he freed himself of his bonds and clutched both his hands over his heart; Kien breathed again.

  Then suddenly the victim tore his bosom wide open. Books poured forth in torrents. Scores, hundreds, they were beyond counting; the flames licked up towards the paper; each one wailed for help; a fearful shrieking rose on all sides. Kien stretched out his arms to the books, now blazing to heaven. The altar was much further off than he had thought. He took a couple of strides and was no nearer. He must run if he was to save them alive. He ran and fell; this cursed shortness of breath; it came of neglecting his physical health; he could tear himself into pieces with rage. A useless creature, when there was need of him he was no use. Those miserable wretches ! Human sacrifices he had heard of—but books, books! Now at last he was at the altar. The fire singed his hair and eyebrows. The wood pyre was enormous; from the distance he had thought it quite small. They must be in the very centre of the fire. Into it then, you coward, you swaggerer, you miserable sinner!

  But why blame himself? He was in the middle of it. Where are you? Where are you? The flames dazzled him. And what the devil was this, wherever he reached out, he could get hold of nothing but shrieking human beings. They clutched hold of him with all their strength. He hurled them from him, they came back to him. They crept to him from below and entwined his knees; from above his head burning torches rained down on him. He was not looking up yet he saw them clearly. They seized on his ears, his hair, his shoulders. They enchained him with their bodies. Bedlam broke loose. 'Let me go,' he shouted, 'I don't know you. What do you want with me! How can I rescue die books!'

  But one of them had thrown himself against his mouth, and clung fast to his tightly closed lips. He wanted to speak again, but he could not open his mouth. He implored them in his mind: I can't save them! I can't save them! He wanted to cry, but where were his tears? His eyes too were fast closed; human beings were pressing against them too. He tried to step free of them, he lifted his right leg high in the air; in vain, it was dragged back again, dragged down by a burden of burning human kind, dragged down by a leaden weight. He abhorred them, these greedy creatures; could they not be satisfied with the life they had had? He loathed them. He would have liked to hurt them, torment them, reproach them; he could do nothing, nothing! Not for one moment did he forget why he was there. They might hold his eyes forcibly shut, but in his spirit he could see mightily. He saw a book growing in every direction at once until it filled the sky and the earth and the whole of space to the very horizon. At its edges a reddish glow, slowly, quietly, devoured it. Proud, silent, uncomplaining, it endured a martyr's death. Men screamed and shrieked, the book burnt without a word. Martyrs do not cry out, saints do not cry out.

  Then a voice spoke; in it was all knowledge, for it was the voice of God: 'There are no books here. All is vanity.' And at once Kien knew that the voice spoke truth. Lightly, he threw off the burning mob and jumped out of the fire. He was saved. Did it hurt then?

  Terribly, he answered himself, but not so much as people usually think. He was extraordinarily happy about the voice. He could see himself, dancing away from the altar. At a little distance, he turned round. He was tempted to laugh at the empty fire.

  Then he stood still, lost in contemplation of Rome. He saw the mass of struggling limbs; the air was thick with the smell of burning flesh. How stupid men are ! He forgot his anger. A single step, and they could save themselves.

  Suddenly, he did not know how it could have happened, the men were changed into books. He gave a great cry and rushed, beside himself, in the direction of the fire. He ran, panted, scolded himself, leaped into the flames and was again surrounded by those imploring human bodies. Again the terror seized him, again God's voice set him free, again he escaped and watched again from the same place the same scene. Four times he let himself be fooled. The speed with which events succeeded each other increased each time. He knew that he was bathed in sweat. Secretly he began to long for the breathing space allowed him between one excitement and the next. In the fourth pause, he was overtaken by the Last Judgment. Gigantic wagons, high as houses, as mountains, high as the heavens, closed in from two, ten, twenty, from all sides upon the devouring altar. The voice, harsh and destructive, mocked him: 'Now come the books!' Kien cried out and woke.

  This dream, the worst dream he could remember, weighed upon his spirit for half an hour afterwards. An ill-extinguished match dropped while he was enjoying himself in the street — and his library would be lost! He had insured it more than once. But he doubted if he would have the strength to go on living after the destruction of twenty-five thousand books, let alone see about the payment of the insurance. He had taken out the policies in a contemptible frame of mind; later he was ashamed of them. He would have liked to cancel them. Indeed he only paid the necessary fees so as not to have to reenter the office in which books and cattle were subject to the same laws, and to be spared the visits of the companies' representatives who would doubtless be sent to call on him at home.

  Divided into its elements a dream loses its terrors. He had been looking at Mexican pictorial writings only yesterday. One of them represented the sacrifice of a prisoner by two priests disguised as jaguars. His chance meeting with a blind man a few days before had made him think of Eratosthenes the aged librarian of Alexandria. The name of Alexandria would naturally provoke the recollection of the burning of the famous library. A certain medieval woodcut, whose ingenuousness always made him smile, depicted about thirty Jews on a burning pyre flaming to heaven yet obstinately screeching their prayers. He was a great admirer of Michelangelo; above all he admired his Last Judgment. In that picture sinners are being dragged to Hell by pitiless devils. One of the damned, the picture of terror and anguish, covers his cowardly flaccid face with his hands; devils are clutching at his legs but he has never seen the woes of other people and dare not look at his own now. On the height stands Christ, very un-Christlike, condemning the damned with muscular and mighty arm. From all these recollections sleep had concocted a dream.

  When Kien pushed the wash-trolley out of his bedroom he heard on an unexpectedly high note the exclamation: 'Up already!' Why did the creature speak so loud early in the morning when he was still almost asleep? Very true he had promised to lend her a book. A novel was the only thing worth considering for her. But no mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men's places. Thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing figments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view. Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people's goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of his victim. Novels should be prohibited by the State.

  At seven o'clock Kien once again opened his door. Thérèse was standing in front of it, as trusting and modest as always, her prominent left ear perhaps a trifle more crooked.

  'I make so bold,' she reminded him impertinently.

  What littl
e blood Kien had rushed to his head. So she would stick to it, this cursed creature in her starched skirt, and exact what had once been thoughtlessly promised. 'You want that book,' he cried and his voice cracked. 'You shall have it.'

  He slammed the door in her face, strode with quivering steps into the third room, inserted one finger into the shelves and extracted The Trousers of Herr von Bredow. He had possessed this book from his earliest schooldays, had then lent it to all his classmates, and on account of the deplorable condition in which it had been ever since could not bear the sight of it. He looked with malice at its grease-spotted binding and sticky pages. Calm now, he went back to Thérèse and held the book close to her eyes.

  'That was unnecessary,' she said and pulled out from under her arm a thick bundle of paper, packing paper, as he now noticed for the first time. With some ceremony she selected a suitable piece and wrapped it round the book like a shawl round a baby. Then she selected a second piece of paper and said, 'A stitch in time saves nine'. When the second piece of paper did not lie smoothly enough, she tore it off and tried a third one.

  Kien followed her movements as though he were seeing her for the first time. He had underestimated her. She knew how to handle a book better than he did. This old thing was loathsome to him, but she wrapped it carefully up in two layers of paper. She kept the palms of her hands clear of the binding. She worked with her finger tips alone. Her fingers were not so coarse after all. He felt ashamed of himself and pleased with her. Should he fetch her something else? She deserved something less shabby. Still, for a beginning she could make do with this one. Even without encouragement she would soon be asking for another. For eight long years his library had been safe in her care; he had not known it.

  'I have to leave to-morrow,' he said suddenly, as she was smoothing down the paper cover with her knuckles. 'For some months.'

  'Then I shall be able to dust properly for once. Is an hour long enough;'

  'What would you do if a fire broke out?'

  She was horrified. She dropped the paper to the ground. The book remained in her hand. 'Gracious Heavens, save the books!'

  'But I am not really going away: I was only joking,' Kien smiled. Carried away by this picture of extreme devotion — himself absent and the books alone — he came closer to her and patted her on the shoulder with his. bony fingers, saying-in a tone almost friendly, 'You're a good creature.'

  'I must have a look what you've chosen for me,' she said, and the corners of her mouth seemed to reach out almost to her ears. She opened the book and read aloud, 'The Trousers' — she interrupted herself but did not blush. Her face was bedewed with a light sweat.

  'Excuse me, Professor,' she exclaimed, and glided away, swiftly triumphant, towards her kitchen.

  During the ensuing days Kien exerted himself to recover his old power of concentration. He too knew moments when he was tired of his services to the written word and felt a secret desire for more of the company of human kind than his strength of character normally permitted. When he entered into open conflict with such temptations he wasted much time; they tended to grow stronger if he fought them. He had contrived a more ingenious method: he out-manoeuvred them. He did not pillow his head on the writing desk and lose himself in idle desires. He did not walk up and down the streets and enter into trivial conversations with fools. On the contrary he filled the library with the distinguished friends he had read. Mostly he inclined to the ancient Chinese. He commanded them to step out of the volume and the shelf to which they belonged, beckoned to them, offered them chairs, greeted them, threatened them, and according to his taste put their own words into their mouths and defended his own opinions against them until at length he had silenced them. When he entered into written controversy he found his words acquired from this practice an unexpected force. In this way he practiced speaking Chinese and took pride in the clever phrases which flowed from his lips so easily and so emphatically. If I go to the theatre (he thought) I hear a conversation in double-Dutch which is entertaining but not instructive, and in the end not even entertaining, only boring. Two or even three whole valuable hours must I sacrifice only to go to bed feeling irritated. My own dialogues do not go on so long and have meaning and balance. In this way he justified to himself the harmless game which might have seemed odd to a spectator.

  Sometimes Kien would meet, either in the street or in a bookshop, a barbarous fellow who amazed him by uttering a reasonable sentiment. In order to obliterate any impression which contradicted his contempt for the mass of mankind he would in such cases perform a small arithmetical calculation. How many words does this fellow speak in a single day? At a conservative reckoning ten thousand. Three of them* are not without sense. By chance I overheard those three. The other words which whirl through his head at a rate of several hundred thousand per day, which he thinks but does not even speak — one imbecility after another — are to be guessed merely by looking at his features; fortunately one does not have to listen to them.

  His housekeeper, however, spoke little, since she was always alone. At a flash, they seemed to have something in common; his thoughts recurred to it hourly. Whenever he saw her, he remembered at once how carefully she had wrapped up The Trousers of Herr von Bredow. The book had been in his library for years. Every time he passed it the sight of its back alone smote his heart. Yet he had left it, just as it was. Why had it not occurred to him to care for its improvement by providing it with a handsome wrapper? He had lamentably failed in his duty. And now came a simple housekeeper and taught him what was tight and seemly.

  Or was she play-acting for his benefit? Perhaps she was merely flattering him into a sense of false security. His library was famous. Dealers had often besieged him for unique editions. Perhaps she was planning some vast robbery. He must find out how she acted when she was alone with the book.

  One day he surprised her in the kitchen. His doubts tormented him; he longed for certainty. Once unmasked, he would throw her out. He wanted a glass of water; she had evidently not heard him calling. While she made haste to satisfy his wishes, he examined the table at which she had been sitting. On a small embroidered velvet cushion lay his book. Open at page 20. She had not yet read very far. She offered him the glass on a plate. It was then he saw that she had white kid gloves on her hands. He forgot to close his fingers round the glass; it fefl to the floor, the plate after it. Noise and diversion were welcome to him. He could not have brought a word to his lips. Ever since he was five years old, for thirty-five years, he had been reading. And the thought had never once crossed his mind, to put on gloves for the purpose. His embarrassment seemed ridiculous, even to himself. He pulled himself together and asked casually: 'You have not got very far yet?'

  'I read every page a dozen times, otherwise you can't get the best out of it.'

  'Do you like it?' He had to force himself to go on speaking, or he would have fallen to the ground as easily as the glass of water.

  'A book is always beautiful. You need to understand it. There were grease spots on it, I've tried everything but I can't get them out. What shall I do now?'

  'They were there before.'

  'All the same, it's a pity. Excuse me, a book like this is a treasure.'

  She did not say 'must cost a lot', she said 'is a treasure'. She meant its intrinsic value, not its price. And he had babbled to her of the capital which was locked up in his library! This woman must despise him. Hers was a generous spirit. She sat up night after night trying to remove old grease spots from a book, instead of sleeping. He gave her his shabbiest, most dog-cared and worn-out book out of sheer distaste, and she took it into loving care. She had compassion, not for men (there was nothing in that) but for books. The weary and heavy-laden could come to her. The meanest, the most forsaken and forgotten creature on the face of God's earth, she would take to her heart.

  Kien left the kitchen in the deepest perturbation. Not one word more did he say to the saint.

  In the lofty nails of his library he paced u
p and down and called on Confucius. He came towards him from the opposite wall, calm and self-possessed — it is easy to be self-possessed when you have been dead for centuries. With long strides Kien went to meet him. He forgot to make any obeisance. His excitement contrasted strangely with the bearing of the Chinese sage.

  'I think that I am not wholly without education!' he shouted from a distance of five paces, 'I think I am not wholly without tact. People have tried to persuade me that education and tact are the same thing, that one is impossible without the other. Who tried to persuade me of this? You! He was not shy of Confucius; he called him 'you' straight out. 'Here comes a person without a spark of education and she has more sensibility, more heart, more dignity, more humanity than I or you and all your learned disciples put together!'

  Confucius was not to be put out of countenance. He did not even forget to make his bow before he was spoken to. In spite of these incredible accusations, he did not even raise his eyebrows. Beneath them, his eyes, very ancient and black, were wise as those of an ape. Deliberately he opened his mouth and uttered the following saying:

  'At fifteen my inclination was to learning, at thirty I was fixed in that path, at forty I had no more doubts — but only when I was sixty were my ears opened.'