Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp Page A

incongruous effect, but he didn't fancy the short pants of the country,
with winter coming on. He also wore a cloak, which was nothing but a big square
blanket with a hole in the middle to put his head through. He had hired an old
woman to make him socks and underwear.
     
                Altogether he was pretty
well pleased with himself. He admitted he had been lucky in finding Thomasus;
the Syrian had been an enormous help to him.
     
                He approached the library
with much the same visceral tingle that a lover gets from the imminence of a
meeting with his beloved. Nor was he disappointed. He felt like shouting when a
brief nosing about the shelves showed him Berosus' Chaldean History , the
complete works of Livius, Tacitus' History of the Conquest of Britain ,
and Cassiodorus' recently published Gothic History complete. Here was
stuff for which more than one twentieth-century historian or archaeologist
would cheerfully commit murder.
     
                For a few minutes he simply
dithered, like the proverbial ass between two haystacks. Then he decided that
Cassiodorus would have the most valuable information to impart, as it dealt
with an environment in which he himself was living. So he lugged the big volumes
out and set to work. It was hard work, too, even for a man who knew Latin. The
books were written in a semi-cursive minuscule hand with all the words run
together. The incredibly wordy and affected style of the writer didn't bother
him as it would have if he had been reading English; he was after facts.
     
                "Excuse me, sir,"
said the librarian, "but is that tall barbarian with the yellow mustache
your man?"
     
                "I suppose so,"
said Padway. "What is it?"
     
                "He's gone to sleep in
the Oriental section, and he's snoring so that the readers are
complaining."
     
                "I'll tend to
him," said Padway.
     
                He went over and awakened
Fritharik. "Can't you read?" he asked.
     
                "No," said
Fritharik quite simply. "Why should I? When I had my beautiful estate in
Africa, there was no occasion —"
     
                "Yes, I know all about
your beautiful estate, old man. But you'll have to learn to read, or else do
your snoring outside."
     
                Fritharik went out somewhat
huffily, muttering in his own East-German dialect. Padway's guess was that he
was calling reading a sissy accomplishment.
     
                When Padway got back to his
table, he found an elderly Italian dressed with simple elegance going through
his Cassiodorus. The man looked up and said: "I'm sorry; were you reading
these?"
     
                "That's all
right," said Padway. "I wasn't reading all of them. If you're not
using the first volume ..."
     
                "Certainly, certainly,
my dear young man. I ought to warn you, though, to be careful to put it back in
its proper place. Scylla cheated of her prey by Jason has no fury like that of
our esteemed librarian when people misplace his books. And what, may I ask, do
you think of the work of our illustrious pretorian prefect?"
     
                "That depends,"
said Padway judiciously. "He has a lot of facts you can't get elsewhere.
But I prefer my facts straight."
     
                "How do you mean?"
     
                "I mean with less
flowery rhetoric."
     
                "Oh, but my dear, dear
young man! Here we moderns have at last produced a historian to rank with the
great Livius, and you say you don't like —" He glanced up, lowered his
voice, and leaned forward. "Just consider the delicate imagery, the
glorious erudition! Such style! Such wit!"
     
                "That's just the
trouble. You can't give me Polybius, or even Julius Caesar —"
     
                "Julius Caesar! Why
everybody knows he couldn't