etous fingers, marked
the progress from passion to mania, the growth of the hard and selfish
cyst, which was feeding its monstrous size upon the ruin of the whole
organism. Astier was becoming the intractable Harpagon of the stage,
pitiless to others as to himself, bewailing his poverty and riding in
the omnibus, while in two years nearly 6500L. of his savings dropped
secretly into the pocket of the humpback. To account to Madame Astier,
Corentine, and Teyssedre for the frequent visits of the little man, he
received from the Academician pamphlets to bind, which he took away
and brought back ostentatiously. They corresponded by a sort of private
code. Fage would write on a post-card, 'I have some new tooling to
show you, sixteenth century, in good condition and rare.' Astier would
temporise: 'Not wanted, thanks. Perhaps later.' Then would come 'My
dear Sir, Do not think of it. I will try elsewhere,' and to this the
Academician invariably answered 'Early to-morrow morning. Bring the
tooling.' Here was the torment of the collector's pleasure. He must buy
and buy, or else let pass to Bos, Huchenard, or some other rival the
treasures of Menilmontant. Sometimes the thought of the time when money
must fail would put him into a grim rage, and infuriated by the calm,
self-satisfied countenance of the dwarf, he would exclaim 'More than
6400L. in two years! And still you say, the lady is in want of money!
How on earth does she get rid of it? 'At such moments he longed for the
death of the old maid, the annihilation of the bookbinder, even a war,
revolution, or general catastrophe, which might swallow up both the
treasure and the relentless speculators who worked it.

And now the catastrophe was indeed near, not the catastrophe desired,
for destiny never finds to her hand precisely the thing we asked for,
but a turn of things so sudden and appalling as to threaten his work,
his honour, fortune, and fame, all that he was and all that he had. As
he strode away towards the Cour des Comptes, deadly pale and talking
to himself, the booksellers and print-dealers along the quay scarcely
recognised the Astier-Rehu who, instead of looking right into the shop
for a bow, now passed them without recognition. To him neither person
nor thing was visible. In imagination he was grasping the humpback by
the throat, shaking him by his pin-bespangled scarf, and thrusting under
his nose the autographs dishonoured by the chemistry of Delpech, with
the