Dame de Confort.


By bad (or good) luck this rare piece was imperfect--the back
gaping and three sheets gone. But, in turning over the leaves, I
saw something that brought my heart, as they say, into my mouth.
So, beating down Bell from his upset price of fourpence to six
bawbees, I pushed the treasure carelessly in my pocket, and never
stopped till I was in a lonely place by Tyne-side and secure from
observation. Then, with my knife, I very carefully uncased Maistre
Guillaume, and extracted the sheet of parchment, printed in black
letter with red capitals, that had been used to line the binding.
A corner of it had crept out, through the injuries of time, and on
that, in Bell's "crame" (for it is more a crame than a shop), I had
caught the mystic words Runjt macht Gunjt.

And now, I think, Monkbarns, you prick up your ears and wipe your
spectacles. That is the motto, as every one of the learned family
of antiquaries is well aware, and, as you have often told me, of
your great forbear, the venerable and praiseworthy Aldobrand
Oldenbuck the Typographer, who fled from the Low Countries during
the tyrannical attempt of Philip II. to suppress at once civil and
religious liberty. As all the world knows, he withdrew from
Nuremberg to Scotland, and set up his Penates and (what you may not
hitherto have been aware of) his Printing Press at Fairport, and
under your ancestral roof of Monkbarns. But, what will surprise
you yet more, the parchment sheet which bears Aldobrand's motto in
German contains printed matter in good Scots! This excellent and
enterprising man must have set himself to ply his noble art in his
new home, and in our unfamiliar tongue.