On leaving Maurice placed a louis on the mantelpiece and went away moved
and troubled, persuaded that Madame Mira possessed supernatural
faculties, but unfortunately insufficient ones.

At the bottom of the stairs he remembered he had left the little
_Lucretius_ on the table of the pythoness, and, thinking that the old
maniac Sariette would never get over its loss, went up to recover
possession of it.

On re-entering the paternal abode his gaze lighted upon a shadowy and
grief-stricken figure. It was old Sariette, who in tones as plaintive as
the wail of the November wind began to beg for his _Lucretius_. Maurice
pulled it carelessly out of his great-coat pocket.

"Don't flurry yourself, Monsieur Sariette," said he. "There the thing
is."

Clasping the jewel to his bosom the old librarian bore it away and laid
it gently down on the blue table-cloth, thinking all the while where he
might safely hide his precious treasure, and turning over all sorts of
schemes in his mind as became a zealous curator. But who among us shall
boast of his wisdom? The foresight of man is short, and his prudence is
for ever being baffled. The blows of fate are ineluctable; no man shall
evade his doom. There is no counsel, no caution that avails against
destiny. Hapless as we are, the same blind force which regulates the
courses of atom and of star fashions universal order from our
vicissitudes. Our ill-fortune is necessary to the harmony of the
Universe. It was the day for the binder, a day which the revolving
seasons brought round twice a year, beneath the sign of the Ram and the
sign of the Scales. That day, ever since morning, Monsieur Sariette had
been making things ready for the binder. He had laid out on the table as
many of the newly purchased paper-bound volumes as were deemed worthy of
a permanent binding or of being put in boards, and also those books
whose binding was in need of repair, and of all these he had drawn up a
detailed and accurate list. Punctually at five o'clock, old Amedee, the
man from Leger-Massieu's, the binder in the Rue de l'Abbaye, presented
himself at the d'Esparvieu library and, after a double check had been
carried out by Monsieur Sariette, thrust the books he was to take back
to his master into a piece of cloth which he fastened into knots at the
four corners and hoisted on to his shoulder. He then saluted the
librarian with the following words, "Good night, all!" and went
downstairs.

Everything went