" It
had reached him but a week before from Venice,--"_in Venetia, al segno
del Pozzo_, MDLVII," said the title-page, in fact. It was bound in
vellum, pierced by bookworms, and was decorated, in quaint seventeenth-
century penmanship, with marginal annotations, and also, on the fly leaves,
with repeated honorifics due to a study of the forms of address by some
young aspirant for favor. Randolph had rather depended on it to take Cope's
interest; but now the little _envoi_ from the Lagoons seemed lesser in
its lustre. Cope indeed took the volume with docility and looked at its
classical title-page and at its quaint Biblical colophon; but, "Just who
_was_ 'Pietro Bembo'?" he asked; and Randolph realized, with a slight
shock, that young instructors teach only what they themselves lately have
learned, and that, in many cases, they have not learned much.
But in truth neither paid much heed to the tabulated vocables of the
Venetian cardinal--nor to any of the other rarities near by. Basil Randolph
was wondering how he was to take Arthur Lemoyne, and was asking himself if
his trouble in setting up a new menage was likely to go for nothing; and
Bertram Cope, while he pursued the course of the bookworm through the
parchment covers and the yellowed sheets within, was wondering in what
definite way his host might aid the fortunes of Arthur Lemoyne and thus
make matters a little easier for them both.
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