Sinopsis

It was on the thirteenth of May, 1875, at Stockholm. I well the large room of the Royal Library which extended through a whole wing of the Castle, with its beechen wainscoting, brown with age like the meerschaum of a much-used cigar-holder. The enormous room, with its rococo headings, garlands, chains and armorial bearings, round which, at the height of the first floor, ran a gallery ed by Tuscan columns, was yawning like a great chasm underneath my feet; with its hundred thousand volumes it resembled a gigantic brain, with the thoughts of long-forgotten generations neatly arranged on shelves.