When Naude has been in town, the booksellers' shops seem
devastated as by a whirlwind. Having bought up in every last
one of them all the books, whether in manuscript or in print,
dealing in any language whatever with any subject or divi,
sion of learning no matter what, he has left the stores stripped
and bare. Sometimes, moreover, as if he had come to those
shops not as a purchaser of books, but to get at the size of
the walls, he measures with a surveyor's rod all the books
and the shelves clear to the roof, and names his figure on
the basis of that measurement. Not infrequently he comes to
a place where there are on view heaps of books, piles of a
hundred or a thousand apiece; he asks the price; the seller
names it; they fail to agree; they wrangle; but in the end it
is he who by insisting, by pushing, and finally by sheer rna,
lignancy, has his way so that he carries off the very best
volumes cheaper than if they were pears or lemons, while
the merchant, thinking over the transaction at his leisure,
complains that a veil was cast over his eyes and his hand
forced, because for those books he could have got a far better
price from the spice merchants, for casing incense or pepper;
or from the food merchants, for wrapping up butter. But you
just ought to see the fellow dashing out of the bookshops;
you could not help laughing, so covered from head to foot is
he with cobwebs and the dust of learning