When his cane touched a small movable object, he forgot that he had often prayed for exactly such an experience, and he was amazed and excited. He knelt down and thrust his hand into the opening. A book! Many books! His old cheeks quivered and his beard trembled upon his aged breast. He pressed his body against the crumbling plaster so as to reach in still farther, reproaching himself because he was surprised at a blessing for which he had so ardently prayed. A library of books--other "Mystic Doves" and "Sweet Lilies!"
He drew them out, one by one. But the binding was not of musty leather, but of cheap modern cloth; the language was neither German nor Latin, and there was no musty odor of sanctity--what could they be? Still kneeling painfully, he opened the uppermost of the pile which he had made and began to read.
"Hitherto he had never compromised himself in his relations with women. As he had often said of himself, he had inspired no great passion, but a multitude of caprices. But now he had begun to feel that it is one love and not twenty that makes life memorable; he wished to redeem his life from intrigues, and here was the very chance he was waiting for. But habit had rendered him cowardly, and this affair frightened him almost as much as marriage had done. To go away with her, he felt, was equivalent to marrying her. His life would never be the same again. The list would be lost to him forever; no more lists for him. He would be known as the man who lived with--lived with whom? A girl picked up in the suburbs who sang rather prettily."
"He was the young poet whom all Paris fell in love with. He came up to Paris with a married woman; I think they came from Angoulême. I haven't read Lost Illusions for twenty years. She and he were the stars in the society of some provincial town, but when they arrived in Paris each thought the other very common and countrified. He compares her with Madame d'Espard; she compares him with Rastignac; Balzac completes the picture with a touch of pure genius--they forgot that six months would transform them both into exquisite Parisians!"
Grandfather turned another hundred pages.
"'Dearest, we cannot spend the night driving about London.'