A legion of employees kept rushing past, and counterweighted lifts, set into the walls, were raising the clerks to the upper shelves of the various rooms; there was a considerable crowd in front of the telegraph desk, and porters were struggling under their loads of books.

Amazed, Michel vainly attempted to estimate the number of books that covered the walls from floor to ceiling, their rows vanishing among the endless galleries of this imperial establishment. "I'll never manage to read all this, " he thought, taking his place in line; at last he reached the window.

"What is it you want, sir?" he was asked by the clerk in charge of requests.

"I'd like the complete works of Victor Hugo, " Michel replied.

The clerk's eyes widened. "Victor Hugo? What's he written?"

"He's one of the great poets of the nineteenth century, actually the greatest, " the young man answered, blushing as he spoke.

"Do you know anything about this?" the man at the desk asked a second clerk in charge of research.

"Never heard of him, " came the answer. "You're sure that's the name?"

"Absolutely sure. "

"The thing is, " the clerk continued, "we rarely sell literary works here. But if you're sure of the name... Rhugo, Rhugo... " he murmured, tapping out the name.

"Hugo, " Michel repeated. "And while you're at it, please ask for Balzac, Musset, Lamartine...

"Scholars?"

"No! They're authors. "

"Living?"

"They've been dead for over a century. "

"Sir, we'll do all we can to help you, but I'm afraid our efforts will require some time, and even then I'm not sure..."

"I'll wait, " Michel replied. And he stepped out of line into a corner, abashed. So all that fame had lasted less than a hundred years! Les Orientales, Les Méditations, La Comédie Humaine—forgotten, lost, unknown! Yet here were huge crates of books which giant steam cranes were unloading in the courtyards, and buyers were crowding around the purchase desk. But one of them was asking for Stress Theory in twenty volumes, another for an Abstract of Electric Problems, this one for A Practical Treatise for the Lubrication of Driveshafts, and that one for the latest Monograph on Cancer of the Brain.

"How strange!" mused Michel. "All of science and industry here, just as at school, and nothing for art! I must sound like a madman, asking for literary works here—am I insane?" Michel lost himself in such reflections for a good hour; the searches continued, the telegraph operated uninterruptedly, and the names of "his" authors were confirmed; cellars and attics were ransacked, but in vain. He would have to give up.

"Monsieur, " a clerk in charge of the Response Desk informed him, "we don't have any of this. No doubt these authors were obscure in their own period, and their works haven't been reprinted... "

"There must have been at least half a million copies of Notre-Dame de Paris published in Hugo's lifetime, " Michel replied.

"I believe you, sir, but the only old author reprinted nowadays is Paul de Kock[8], a moralist of the last century; it seems to be very nicely written, and if you'd like—"

"I'll look elsewhere, " Michel answered.

"Oh, you can comb the entire city. What you can't find here won't turn up anywhere else, I can promise you that!"

"We'll see, " Michel said as he walked away.

"But, sir, " the clerk persisted, worthy in his zeal of being a wine salesman, "might you be interested in any works of contemporary literature? We have some items here that have enjoyed a certain success in recent years—they haven't sold badly for poetry..."

"Ah!" said Michel, tempted, "you have modern poems?"

"Of course. For instance, Martillac's Electric Harmonies, which won a prize last year from the Academy of Sciences, and Monsieur de Pulfasse's Meditations on Oxygen; and we have the Poetic Parallelogram, and even the Decarbonated Odes..."

Michel couldn't bear hearing another word and found himself outside again, stupefied and overcome.

Not even this tiny amount of art had escaped the pernicious influence of the age! Science, Chemistry, Mechanics had invaded the realm of poetry! "And such things are read, " he murmured as he hurried through the streets, "perhaps even bought! And signed by the authors and placed on the shelves marked Literature. But not one copy of Balzac, not one work by Victor Hugo! Where can I find such things—where, if not the Library..."

Almost running now, Michel made his way to the Imperial Library; its buildings, amazingly enlarged, now extended along a great part of the Rue de Richelieu from the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs to the Rue de la Bourse. The books, constantly accumulating, had burst through the walls of the old Hotel de Nevers. Each year fabulous quantities of scientific works were printed; there were not suppliers enough for the demand, and the State itself had turned publisher: the nine hundred volumes bequeathed by Charles V, multiplied a thousand times, would not have equaled the number now registered in the library; the eight hundred thousand volumes possessed in 1860 now reached over two million.

Michel asked for the section of the buildings reserved for literature and followed the stairway through Hieroglyphics, which some workmen were restoring with shovels and pickaxes. Having reached the Hall of Letters, Michel found it deserted, and stranger today in its abandonment than when it had formerly been filled with studious throngs. A few foreigners still visited the place as if it were the Sahara, and were shown where an Arab died in 1875, at the same table he had occupied all his life.

The formalities necessary to obtain a work were quite complicated; the borrower's form had to contain the book's title, format, publication date, edition number, and the author's name—in other words, unless one was already informed, one could not become so. At the bottom, spaces were left to indicate the borrower's age, address, profession, and purpose of research.

Michel obeyed these regulations and handed his properly filled-out form to the librarian sleeping at his desk; following his example, the pages were snoring loudly on chairs set around the wall; their functions had become a sinecure as complete as those of the ushers at the Comédie-Française. The librarian, waking with a start, stared at the bold young man; he read the form and appeared to be stupefied at the request; after much deliberation, to Michel's alarm, he sent the latter to a subordinate official working near his own window, but at a separate little desk. Michel found himself facing a man of about seventy, bright-eyed and smiling, with the look of a scholar who believed he knew nothing. This modest clerk took Michel's form and read it attentively. "You want the authors of the nineteenth century, " he said. "That's quite an honor for them—it will allow us to dust them off. As we say here, Monsieur... Michel Dufrénoy?" At this name, the old man's head jerked up. "You are Michel Dufrénoy?" he exclaimed. "Of course you are, I hadn't really taken a look at you!"

"You know me?"

"Do I know you!" The old man could not go on; overpowering emotion was evident on his kindly countenance; he held out his hand, and Michel, trustingly, shook it with great affection.