Chapter 48 Chapter Forty-Three

Sixth Prayer The order in which the previous librarians took over has been reconsidered, and further information has been obtained about the mysterious book William decided to go back to the office again.He asked Benno to lend him the catalogue, and he flipped through it. "Must be around here," he said, "I just saw it an hour ago..." He stopped on a certain page. "Here," he said, "you look at this." One of the columns on this page records a set of four titles, indicating a book containing many texts. I read: 1. ar. de dictis cuiusdam stulti. 2. syr.libellus alchemicus aegypt.

3. Expositio Magistri Alcofribae de coena beati Cypriani Cartaginensis Episcopi. 4. Liter acepalus de stupris virginum et meretricum amoribus "What is this?" I asked. "It's our book," William whispered, "because your dream reminded me of it. Now I'm sure it's it. In fact"—he glanced at the next few pages quickly—" In fact, the books are what I thought they were, all together. That's not what I'm looking for though. Look here. Have you got your notebook? Great. We'll have to do the math and try to recall clearly What Alinardo said to us that day, and what we heard this morning from Nicolas. Now, Nicholas says, he arrived here about thirty years ago, when Abo was appointed Dean. The dean before him was Paolo of Rimini. Wasn't it? Then the exchange probably took place in 1290, up or down, it doesn't matter. Nicolas also told us that when he arrived Robert of Bobbio was already a librarian at the time. Right? Then Robert died and the position passed to Malachi, around the turn of the century. Write this down. However, in Nico Before Russ came here, it was Paul of Rimini who was the librarian for a while. How long did he stay in that position? We don't know. We can check the monastery notebooks, but I think the ones who keep the notebooks are Dean, I don't want to ask him for a loan at the moment. Let's assume that Paul was appointed librarian sixty years ago. Write that down too. Why does Alinardo complain about fifty years ago when he should have been appointed librarian? Administrator, what about the fact that it turned out to be someone else? Was he referring to Paolo of Rimini?"

"Or Robert of Bobbio!" I said. ※Bandhammer Academy's E-Book※ "Seems so. But let's look at the table of contents again. You know, the titles are in chronological order. Who wrote down the titles? The librarian. Therefore, from the Handwriting, we can tell the librarian's continuation. Now we look back from behind; the last handwriting is Malachi's, you see. It's only a few pages before and after. The monastery hasn't got many new books in these thirty years. Then, Looking back, the handwriting on these dozens of pages showed signs of trembling. This was obviously Robert of Bobbio because he was ill. Robert may not have held this position for a long time.

"Then what do we find? Another man's handwriting, strong and powerful, takes up a lot of space (including some of the books I just checked); Paul of Rimini must have worked hard! Too hard, if you remember Ni Colas has told us that he took over as dean at a very young age. But let us assume that in those years voracious readers brought so many books to the library. Didn't Nicholas follow We say, does he have a strange disease called agraphia? Then who would have written these lists? Presumably his assistant librarian. But if this assistant administrator takes over from the official librarian, he The writing should continue, which might explain the same handwriting on so many pages. So, between Paul and Robert, there should be another librarian, who took over about fifty years ago , Alienardo's mysterious enemy; Alienardo thought that Paul's successor should be him. Then this man died, and to the surprise of Alienardo and others, Robert was appointed to take his place .”

"How can you be sure that this is the correct inference? Even if these writings were left by the anonymous librarian, isn't it possible that the bibliographies on the first few pages were also written by Paul?" "Because in addition to taking down the books they got, they also had to take down all the decrees and imperial edicts, and put down the detailed dates. I mean, look here, it says Boniface VII's fatwa 'Strict vigilance' , 1296, you know the decree didn't arrive until after that year, and you can presume that it wasn't included for too many years. That is, along the years, I placed milestones, so if I Assume that Paul of Rimini became librarian in 1265, and took over as dean in 1275, and I found that his writing, was that of another person, but not Robert of Bobbio, from 1265 to 1285. , then there is a difference of ten years between them."

My mentor is really amazing. I asked, "From this error, what conclusion do you draw?" "No conclusion," he replied, "just premises." Then he got up and went to talk to Benno.Benno didn't dare to take Malachi's seat, and he still sat behind his old desk, but his expression was not very calm.When William spoke to him, his tone was quite cold.We have not forgotten the unpleasant scene of the previous night. "Even with your powerful new position, brother librarian, I'm sure you'll answer a question. When Adelmo and the others were talking witty riddles that morning, Belenga first mentioned 'Africa's End ’, did anyone mention “Slutty Siberian”?”

"Yes," said Benno, "didn't I tell you? Before they discussed the 'Poetry' riddle, Venantius himself mentioned the Lascivious Siberian, and Malachi became annoyed, Said it was a vile work, and reminded us not to forget that the dean forbids anyone from reading that book..." "Dean?" said William. "Interesting. Thank you, Benno." "Wait a minute," said Benno, "I want to talk to you." He motioned for us to follow him out of the office and stand on the stairs leading down to the kitchen so that no one else could hear him.His lips quivered.

"I'm scared, William," he said. "They killed Malachi. I'm the only one who knows too much now. Besides, those Italians hate me...they don't want another foreigner librarian...I believe several others were murdered for this reason...I never told you Aliardo hated Malachi, he was outraged." "Who was it that took away his dream job as a librarian so many years ago?" "I don't know that; he's always vague about it, and, besides, it's a long time ago. They must all be dead by now. But the Italians with Aliardo used to mention To...often referring to Malachi as an idiot, placed here by someone else, and an accomplice to the Dean...I accidentally got involved in a conflict between two rival parties...I didn't know until this morning that Italy is a A place full of conspiracies, they dared to poison the pope, so imagine a poor man like me...yesterday I didn't understand, I thought that book must be responsible for all this, now I'm not sure anymore , that's just an excuse. You know that the book has been recovered, but Malachi is still dead...I must, I want...I want to escape from here. What do you think I should do!"

"Keep calm. You want my advice now, don't you? You were so arrogant last evening! Foolish young man, if you had done me a favor yesterday, we could have stopped this last crime. Yes. You gave Malachi the book to bring him death. But at least tell me one more thing, did you ever take the book, touch it, turn over it? Then why didn't you die? " "I don't know. I swear I didn't touch it. Yes, I touched it when I took it out of the lab, but I didn't open it. I hid it in my monk's robe and went away I went back to my room and put it under my couch. I knew that Malachi was watching me, so I went back to the office at once. Later, Malachi proposed that I be his assistant, and I returned the book to him. That's how it all went."

"Don't tell me you haven't even turned over." "Yes, I opened it before I hid it, just to be sure it was the book you were looking for. Its first volume is in Arabic manuscripts, the second probably in Syriac, and then in Latin text, the last volume is in Greek..." I remembered the abbreviations on the table of contents, the first two headings listed "A" and "Sy"—that was the book! But William chased after him: "You touched it, but you didn't die. Then just touching it won't kill you. What can you tell me about the Greek part? Have you read it?"

"I just looked at it, and I saw that it didn't have a title. At first, it seemed to be a paragraph drawn from somewhere..." "Freedom..." William murmured. ※Bandhammer Academy's E-Book※ "I tried to read the first page, but my Greek was not good. Then another detail aroused my curiosity, which was related to the Greek volume. I didn't turn them all, Because I couldn't. The pages were—how shall I explain?—wet and stuck together. It was not easy to separate them one by one, because that kind of parchment was strange, and it was harder than other parchments. Soft, the first page is rotting, almost crumbling. That's just... weird." "'Strange'? Severinus said so," said William. "That kind of parchment doesn't look like parchment...it looks like cloth, but it's very fine..." Benno said again. "Linen paper," said William. "Have you seen it before?" "I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it. I've heard it's very expensive and very thin. So few people use it. It's made by the Arabs, isn't it?" "They made it. But now it's made in Italy too, in Fabriano. And... ah, of course!" William's eyes lit up. "What an interesting reminder! Great, Benno! I want to thank you! Yes, I think the library linen paper must be rare here, since no recent manuscripts arrive here. Also, there are many people who are afraid that linen paper is not as durable as parchment, maybe that is Really. Let's see, if they want something here that doesn't last longer than copper...wouldn't it be linen paper? Very well, goodbye. And don't worry, you'll be in no danger." We left the office.Benno seemed calmer, even if he wasn't entirely convinced. The dean is in the dining room.William approached him, begging to speak to him.The dean could not avoid it, but agreed to meet with us at his residence later.