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Eight
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451 Eight It was almost noon of the following Monday, April the nineteenth , before La Reynie’s men brought their search to the rue des Lions. Paul and Nicolas were alone in the bindery; it was the first time since Paul’s hiring that such a situation had occurred. They both worked steadily, but a little while after Jean’s departure Paul, unthinking, began to whistle softly. He was rounding the back of a book. His hammer fell with light, even blows, accurate, identical, monotonous. Over its unaccented, unvarying beat, the tune floated, stopped, began again, in no relation to the tapping but blending with it happily . The book, held upright in its vise, was smeared with glue, the glue become firm to the point of tackiness, of the consistency to be malleable, and through it Paul was shaping the back to the proper even arc. If the back was well rounded, when the binding was complete the book would open easily and lie flat. It was an art to round a back, an art in which Paul excelled. The gluepot stood on the floor behind him, cooling slowly. The sun, moving toward the meridian, sent its rays steeply into the courtyard and shortened the oblongs of sunlight on the floor near the windows. The sun had shone every day since Paul had come to Paris, an unprecedented stretch of fair weather. It had given 452 Janet Lewis him on Sunday a long warm afternoon, which he had spent wandering and resting in the meadows by the Bièvre, with a girl whom he might see again, or might not, as he chose. She had been pretty in a certain way, not witty, but companionable . He found her on the Pont Neuf. He had recovered completely, after a night’s sleep, from his terrors of the evening before. Even his certainty that a murder had been committed faded under the influence of the sunlight and the soft air. As for the fantasy of Monsieur Scarron, after the first ten pages he had found it dull. It had put him to sleep and, waking, he was no longer interested. As he whistled and tapped, his thought was on the girl, on the grass where they had rested, and on the willows hung with pollened catkins. He thought of the girl dispassionately, critically . He was pleased with himself because he had enjoyed the day without permitting himself to be taken. Nicolas was preparing a pile of sections, or signatures, for the press. He built the structure of the book: upon a sheet of tin, a piece of clean paper, upon that a section, and then another piece of paper, another sheet of tin, and so on, until all the sections were assembled and the book was ready for the press. The press was old, a standing press with two great uprights, taller than a man, and a strong crossbeam, all in oak, stained and darkened and polished with the passage of time and the touch of hands. The wheel, manipulated by three knobs, rose or descended upon a central screw. It looked, in its hugeness and darkness and its latent power, like an instrument of torture. One man, with his hands on the wheel, could have exerted enough pressure to kill his victim. It stood domesticated, amid the sewing frames, the tables, the cheerful daily litter of the shop. Nicolas placed his pile of signatures in the press; Paul laid down his hammer and went [52.91.84.219] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:09 GMT) 453 t h e g h o s t o f m o n s i e u r s c a r r o n to help him. While the boy steadied the pile, Paul turned the wheel. Too much pressure would force the imprint of the letters from one page to the next; too little would permit the damp sheets to pucker and warp. At the precise moment when the pile had solidified into a block, and before the pressure had become too great, Paul lifted his hands, held them poised a moment over the knobs, and smiled down at Nicolas . Then he returned to his work. They had not exchanged a word. But shortly after, as if resuming a conversation, Nicolas said earnestly: “Naturally, I love my mother.” “Naturally?” Paul repeated in surprise. “What’s so natural about loving your mother? I didn’t love mine.” It was not the answer that...