Somerset maughan

poudre de riz
. The very plane trees had a greater sobriety than 
elsewhere, as though conscious they stood in a Paris where progress 
was not. In front was the turbid Seine, and below, the twin towers of 
Notre Dame. Susie could have kissed the hard paving stones of the 
quay. Her good-natured, plain face lit up as she realized the delight 
of the scene upon which her eyes rested; and it was with a little 
pang, her mind aglow with characters and events from history and 
from fiction, that she turned away to enter Dr Porhoët's house. 
She was pleased that the approach did not clash with her fantasies. 
She mounted a broad staircase, dark but roomy, and, at the 
command of the 
concierge
, rang a tinkling bell at one of the 
doorways that faced her. Dr Porhoët opened in person.. 
'Arthur and Mademoiselle are already here,' he said, as he led her 
in. 
They went through a prim French dining-room, with much 
woodwork and heavy scarlet hangings, to the library. This was a 

---

large room, but the bookcases that lined the walls, and a large 
writing-table heaped up with books, much diminished its size. 
There were books everywhere. They were stacked on the floor and 
piled on every chair. There was hardly space to move. Susie gave a 
cry of delight. 
'Now you mustn't talk to me. I want to look at all your books.' 
'You could not please me more,' said Dr Porhoët, 'but I am afraid 
they will disappoint you. They are of many sorts, but I fear there are 
few that will interest an English young lady.' 
He looked about his writing-table till he found a packet of cigarettes. 
He gravely offered one to each of his guests. Susie was enchanted 
with the strange musty smell of the old books, and she took a first 
glance at them in general. For the most part they were in paper 
bindings, some of them neat enough, but more with broken backs 
and dingy edges; they were set along the shelves in serried rows, 
untidily, without method or plan. There were many older ones also 
in bindings of calf and pigskin, treasure from half the bookshops in 
Europe; and there were huge folios like Prussian grenadiers; and 
tiny Elzevirs, which had been read by patrician ladies in Venice. Just 
as Arthur was a different man in the operating theatre, Dr Porhoët 
was changed among his books. Though he preserved the amiable 
serenity which made him always so attractive, he had there a 
diverting brusqueness of demeanour which contrasted quaintly 
with his usual calm. 
'I was telling these young people, when you came in, of an ancient 
Korân which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom I 
operated upon for cataract.' He showed her a beautifully-written 
Arabic work, with wonderful capitals and headlines in gold. 'You 
know that it is almost impossible for an infidel to acquire the holy 
book, and this is a particularly rare copy, for it was written by Kaït 
Bey, the greatest of the Mameluke Sultans.' 
He handled the delicate pages as a lover of flowers would handle 
rose-leaves. 
'And have you much literature on the occult sciences?' asked Susie. 

---

Dr Porhoët smiled. 
'I venture to think that no private library contains so complete a 
collection, but I dare not show it to you in the presence of our friend 
Arthur. He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic 
smile would betray him.' 
Susie went to the shelves to which he vaguely waved, and looked 
with a peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes 
along the names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an 
unknown region of romance. She felt like an adventurous princess 
who rode on her palfrey into a forest of great bare trees and mystic 
silences, where wan, unearthly shapes pressed upon her way. 
'I thought once of writing a life of that fantastic and grandiloquent 
creature, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von 
Hohenheim,' said Dr Porhoët, 'and I have collected many of his 
books.' 
He took down a slim volume in duodecimo, printed in the 
seventeenth century, with queer plates, on which were all manner of 
cabbalistic signs. The pages had a peculiar, musty odour. They were 
stained with iron-mould. 
'Here is one of the most interesting works concerning the black art. 
It is the