"
Then, as the little ones disappeared into the shadows of the region
above, he added to the Prophet,--
"You've nearly been the death of Madame, sir."
"I'm sure I'm very sorry," said the Prophet.
"Sorrow is no salve, sir, no salve at all. Were it not for her books I
fear we might have lost her."
"Good gracious!"
"Mercifully her books have comforted her. She is resting among them now.
Madame is possessed of a magnificent library, sir, encyclopaedic in its
scope and cosmopolitan in its point of view. In it are represented every
age and every race since the dawn of letters; thousands upon thousands
of authors, sir, Rabelais and Dean Farrar, Lamb and the Hindoos,
Mettlelink and the pith of the great philosophers such as John Oliver
Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Earl Spencer; the biting sarcasm of Hiny, the
pathos of Peps, the oratorical master-strokes of such men as Gladstone,
Demosthenes and Keir Hardie; the romance of Kipling, sir, of Bret Harte
and Danty Rossini; the poetry of Kempis a Browning and of Elizabeth
Thomas Barrett--all, all are there bound in Persian calf. Among these
she seeks for solace. To these she flies in hours of anguish.
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