o about by
himself in Paris. Men are so _queer_, one never knows. You _have_ got the
pills?" And aloud, after these _secreta_, "God bless you, my dear;
good-bye! _cluck_, _cluck_, good-bye!"

There were stranger things written in the manuscript pages that Lucian
cherished, sentences that burnt and glowed like "coals of fire which hath
a most vehement flame." There were phrases that stung and tingled as he
wrote them, and sonorous words poured out in ecstasy and rapture, as in
some of the old litanies. He hugged the thought that a great part of what
he had invented was in the true sense of the word occult: page after page
might have been read aloud to the uninitiated without betraying the inner
meaning. He dreamed night and day over these symbols, he copied and
recopied the manuscript nine times before he wrote it out fairly in a
little book which he made himself of a skin of creamy vellum. In his
mania for acquirements that should be entirely useless he had gained some
skill in illumination, or limning as he preferred to call it, always
choosing the obscurer word as the obscurer arts. First he set himself to
the severe practice of the text; he spent many hours and days of toil in
struggling to fashion the serried columns of black letter, writing and
rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand.
He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving
and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and
flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke
both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some
medium that would rival the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts;
and not till he could produce a fair page of text did he turn to the more
entrancing labor of the capitals and borders and ornaments. He mused long
over the Lombardic letters, as glorious in their way as a cathedral, and
trained his hand to execute the bold and flowing lines; and then there
was the art of the border, blossoming in fretted splendor all about the
page. His cousin, Miss Deacon, called it all a great waste of time,
and his father thought he would have done much better in trying to
improve his ordinary handwriting, which was both ugly and illegible.
Indeed, there seemed but a poor demand for the limner's art. He sent some
specimens of his skill to an "artistic firm" in London; a verse of the
"Maud," curiously emblazoned, and a Latin hymn wit