hold the whole world between the two fingers of your hand as I now
hold these grains of tobacco."

With these words he offered his snuff-box to my tutor.

"You are very polite," said M. Jerome Coignard.

Letting his transported looks wander over the learned walls he
continued:

"Between these third and fourth windows are shelves bearing an
illustrious burden. There is the meeting place of Oriental MSS., who
seem to converse together. I see ten or twelve venerable ones under
shreds of purple and gold figured silks, their vestments. Like a
Byzantine emperor, some of them wear jewelled clasps on their
mantles, others are mailed in ivory plates."

"They are the writings of Jewish, Arabian and Persian cabalists,"
said M. d'Asterac. "You have just opened 'The Powerful Hand.' Close
to it you'll find 'The Open Table,' 'The Faithful Shepherd,' 'The
Fragments of the Temple' and 'The Light of Darkness.' One place is
empty, that of 'Slow Waters,' a precious treatise, which Mosaide
studies at present. Mosaide, as I have already said to you,
gentlemen, is in my house, occupied with the discovery of the
deepest secrets contained in the scriptures of the Hebrews, and,
over a century old as he is, the rabbi consents not to die, before
penetrating into the sense of all cabalistic symbols. I owe him much
gratitude, and beg of you gentlemen, when you see him, to show him
the same regard as I do myself.