this sooner."

At sunrise the next morning he was on the road to Dreux with the
precious roll of poems under his arm. At noon he wiped the dust from
his feet at the door of Monsieur Bril. That learned man broke the
seal of M. Papineau's letter, and sucked up its contents through his
gleaming spectacles as the sun draws water. He took David inside to
his study and sat him down upon a little island beat upon by a sea
of books.

Monsieur Bril had a conscience. He flinched not even at a mass
of manuscript the thickness of a finger length and rolled to an
incorrigible curve. He broke the back of the roll against his knee
and began to read. He slighted nothing; he bored into the lump as a
worm into a nut, seeking for a kernel.

Meanwhile, David sat, marooned, trembling in the spray of so much
literature. It roared in his ears. He held no chart or compass for
voyaging in that sea. Half the world, he thought, must be writing
books.

Monsieur Bril bored to the last page of the poems. Then he took off
his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief.

"My old friend, Papineau, is well?" he asked.

"In the best of health," said David.

"How many sheep have you, Monsieur Mignot?"