



Produced by Michael Wooff




Franciscus Columna


Charles Nodier (1780-1844)


Perhaps you remember our friend Abbot Lowrich whom we met
in Ragusa, in Spalato, in Vienna, in Munich, in Pisa, in
Bologna, and in Lausanne.  He is an excellent fellow, who is
most knowledgeable, but who knows a multitude of things that
we would be happy to forget if we knew them like he does:
the name of the printer of a bad book, the year of birth
of a fool and a thousand other details of trivial importance.
Abbot Lowrich has the glory of having discovered the real
name of Kuicknackius, who was called Starkius, and not,
please note, Polycarpus Starkius, who wrote eight fine
hendecasyllables on the thesis of Kornmannus de ritibus
(on rites) and on the thesis of Kornmannus de ritibus et
doctrina scarabeorum (on rites and the doctrine of scarab
beetles), but Martinus Starkius, the man who wrote thirty-two
hendecasyllables on fleas.  Apart from that, Abbot Lowrich
deserves to be well known and liked; he is witty, has his
heart in the right place, is actively and sincerely obliging,
and he adds to these precious qualities a lively and singular
imagination, which greatly embellishes his conversation, as
long as it does not fall into enumerating minor biographical
and bibliographical details.  I am reconciled to this slight
peccadillo of his, and whenever I meet Abbot Lowrich in my
constant comings and goings across Europe, I run to him from
afar.  And I last met him no more than three months ago.

I had arrived at night at the Two Towers Hotel in Treviso, but
I had only settled in very late, and I had not set foot in the
town itself.  In the morning, as I was going down the stairs,
I saw in front of me one of those strange figures whose faces are
visible from every angle.  It was wearing a hat that defied all
description, adjusted to its head in a way that was maladjusted,
a red and green tie knotted like a scarf, a good four inches above
the collar of the jacket on the left-hand side and a good four
inches below it on the right, a pair of trousers brushed in a
slipshod manner on one leg while the other leg billowed over the
back of a boot with a sort of coquetry.  It had with it a huge
irremovable wallet in which lay so many titles of books, so many
notices, so many plans, so many sketches, so many priceless
treasures for a man of learning that, if he had dropped it, even
a rag-and-bone man would not have picked it up.  There were no
two ways about it, it was Lowrich.  "Lowrich!" I exclaimed, and
we fell into each other's arms.

"I know where you're going," he said, after we had exchanged a few
friendly words, and then, when I had learned that he too had only
just arrived: "You asked for the address of a bookseller, and you
were given that of Apostolo Capoduro who resides in the strada dei
Schiavoni.  I'm going there too, but I don't hold out much hope,
for I've visited his shop twice in ten years and never found books
older than the novels of Abbot Chiari.  That old bookshop has died
the death, been ruined and sacked by barbarians.  But did you have
in mind something in particular to ask him for?"

"I'll admit to you," I answered, "that it would pain me to leave
Northern Italy without taking with me 'The Dream of Poliphilus', of
which I have heard it said that it is a most curious object and is
to be found in Treviso if it is to be found anywhere."

"If it is to be found anywhere," he exclaimed, "is, to be sure,
a prudent rider, for 'The Dream of Poliphilus', or, better still,
Friar Francesco Colonna's 'Hypnerotomachia' is a book that old
bibliographers