Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/51

 was lively, clear, and quite unusually good-natured. His wife was a stately old lady, of a more Southern than Jewish type; her fresh face, which was constantly smiling—with the smile that one sees in paintings of the Empire period—was decked on both sides by a bunch of grey curls, in the old-fashioned style, and so tight were they that they looked as if they were made of wire.

I had been introduced to this venerable pair by their son, to whom I had become attached at the Polytechnic, though he was my senior by several years. He now had an appointment in a factory at Leipzig. I had at once won the favour of the old man by my unfeigned interest in his hobby. He was a bibliophile, but his greatest passion was for the autographs of famous men, of which he had a large collection, from Luther to our time—I should think that if Hermann the Cherusk had left any writings he would surely have got hold of them. The documents were arranged in portfolios, each of which was numbered, and to each portfolio was added a protocol of hand-made paper, (written with goose-quill and specially prepared ink for the sake of eternity), containing proofs of authenticity, as well as reference to biographical works and letter collections, and to these were added his own notes. This precise man was not content to collect only, but when he had got hold of a little manuscript he had no peace until he had found out to what period it belonged; and in cases in which this problem had already been solved, there were still commentaries to be written regarding the persons named, the circumstances referred to in the manuscript, and finally all the conclusions which he had drawn from his research had to be tabulated.

In this way his passion flowed back and contributed, as it were, to the source from which it had sprung, namely,