She realised all at once that she knew
nothing of what had been written in all the centuries whose
literature was represented in the vast collection. She hardly knew
the names of twenty books out of the hundreds of millions that the
world contained. But she could ask Meschini. She looked at him
again, and his face repelled her. Nevertheless, she was too
kindhearted not to enter into conversation with the lonely man
whom she had so rarely seen, but who was one of the oldest members
of her father's household.
"You have spent your life here, have you not?" she asked, for the
sake of saying something.
"Nearly thirty years of it," answered Meschini in a muffled voice.
Her presence tortured him beyond expression. "That is a long time,
and I am not an old man."
"And are you always alone here? Do you never go out? What do you
do all day?"
"I work among the books, Excellency. There are twenty thousand
volumes here, enough to occupy a man's time."
"Yes--but how? Do you have to read them all?" asked Faustina
innocently. "Is that your work?"
"I have read many more than would be believed, for my own
pleasure. But my work is to keep them in order, to see that there
is no variation from the catalogue, so that when learned men come
to make inquiries they may find what they want.
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