“I know at once the condition of an old book by the smell of it,” pursued Richard. “The moment I came in, I knew there must be some here in a bad way—not in their clothes merely, but in their bodies as well—the paper of them, I mean. Whether a man has what they call a soul or not, a book certainly has: the paper and print are the body, and the binding is the clothes. A gentleman I know—but he's a mystic—goes farther, and says the paper is the body, the print the soul, and the meaning the spirit.”
A pretty fellow to be an atheist! my reader may well think.
Mr. Lestrange stared. He must be a local preacher, this blacksmith, this bookbinder, or whatever he was!
“I am sorry you think the books hypocrites,” he said. “They look all right!” he added, casting his eyes over the shelves before him.
“Would you mind me taking down one or two?” asked Richard. “My hands are rather black, but the colour is ingrain, as Spenser might say.”
“Do so, by all means,” answered Lestrange, curious to see how far the fellow could support with proof the accuracy of his scent.
Richard moved three paces, and took down a volume—one of a set, the original edition in quarto of “The Decline and Fall,” bound in russia-leather.
“I thought so!” he said; “going!—going!—Look at the joints of this Gibbon, sir. That's always the way with russia—now-a-days, at least!—Smell that, grandfather! Isn't it sweet? But there's no stay in it! Smell that joint! The leather's stone-dead!—It's the rarest thing to see a volume bound in russia, of which the joints are not broken, or at least cracking. These joints, you see, are gone to powder! All russia does—sooner or later, whatever be the cause.—Just put that joint to your nose, sir! That's part of what you smell so strong in the room.”
He held out the book to him, but Lestrange drew back: it was not fit his nose should stoop to the request of a tradesman!
Richard replaced the book, and took down one after another of the same set.