and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may
it please God to take me from my ladder--from before my shelves of
books!...

"Well, well! it is really himself, pardieu! How are you, Monsieur
Sylvestre Bonnard? And where have you been travelling to all this
time, over the country, while I was waiting for you at the station
with my cabriolet? You missed me when the train came in, and I was
driving back, quite disappointed, to Lusance. Give me your valise,
and get up here beside me in the carriage. Why, do you know it is
fully seven kilometres from here to the chateau?"

Who addresses me thus, at the very top of his voice from the height
of his cabriolet? Monsieur Paul de Gabry, nephew and heir of
Monsieur Honore de Gabry, peer of France in 1842, who recently died
at Monaco. And it was precisely to Monsieur Paul de Gabry's house
that I was going with that valise of mine, so carefully strapped by
my housekeeper. This excellent young man has just inherited,
conjointly with his two brothers-in-law, the property of his uncle,
who, belonging to a very ancient family of distinguished lawyers,
had accumulated in his chateau at Lusance a library rich in MSS.,
some dating back to the fourteenth century. It was for the purpose
of making an inventory and catalogue of these MSS. that I had come
to Lusance at the urgent request of Monsieur Paul de Gabry, whose
father, a perfect gentleman and distinguished bibliophile, had
maintained the most pleasant relations with me during his lifetime.
To tell the truth, Monsieur Paul has not inherited the fine tastes
of his father. Monsieur Paul likes sporting; he is a great authority
on horses and dogs; and I much fear that of all the sciences capable
of satisfying or of duping the inexhaustible curiosity of mankind,