Coictier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not repress an exclamation. “H�, but now, what is there so formidable in this: ‘GLOSSA IN Ep�stolas D. PAULI, Norimbergoe, Antonius Koburger, 1474.’ This is not new. ‘Tis a book of Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences. Is it because it is printed?”

“You have said it,” replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profound meditation, and stood resting, his forefinger bent backward on the folio which had come from the famous press of Nuremberg.

Then he added these mysterious words: “Alas! alas! small things come at the end of great things; a tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice.”