"There remains a kind of book written in blood on the kind of leather we call Gucci-de-trottier, and which the radical chic set wore," said the concierge.
"Go, fetch it, my friend," said the Count. "If it be what I think it is, you shall have an immense domain of pipe-weed, and yet over thee shall pipe-weed have no dominion."
"I run, monsieur," said the guide, and so he did. Then Monte Fato knelt piously before the débris of the bed the death whereof had made it for him an altar. "O my second father," he prayed, "O thou who had remarkable knowledge of good and evil, like that of creatures of a superior essence to our own, if anything remain beyond the tomb that tremble at the sound of the voice of those who remain on earth, O noble heart, supreme mind, profound soul, by a word or sign remove all doubt from my mind, and enknowledge me that I may know in what light the canon of those who follow will present me, and whether any footnote will redeem my soul."
"Take, monsieur!" said a voice behind him. The concierge had returned and extended to him those shoes whereon the abbé Frodia had elaborated all the treasures of his scholarship. It was the great work on healing the disorders of the world in the service of the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, and Order, and it was affectionately known as Frodia's Little Red Book of Ouestmarche.
