The Emperor of Paris

Can anyone actually smell a good book, Grandfather?
Of course not, the old man would bluster. All the buyer need do is hold it. As you are n

    Can anyone actually smell a good book, Grandfather?
    Of course not, the old man would bluster. All the buyer need do is hold it. As you are now. Let it rest in their hands. Curl fingers around the spine as if it were stitched for only them. Run a thumb along the soft edges of its pages. When they hold it, Henri, is when you have them. After that they can smell it all they like.

- C.S. Richardson, The Emperor of Paris, p.47

For the gossips of the bakery it becomes irresistible: the wisps of smoke up their noses, the voices under their windows, the footfalls of curiosity on the move. They are the first to arrive, these busy bodies, shadin gtheir meddlesome eyes and comparing their hare-brained theories.
    Mark this day, someone says. We are witnessing the devil's work. Only Satan would burn a library.

- C.S. Richardson, The Emperor of Paris, p. 1

One might have missed the soggy handkerchief, the stained headband, the flushed cheeks; such was the rehearsed swing of Pascal's walking stick. Here was a gentleman, one could assume, overdressed for the weather but still at ease with himself and his world, wanting for nothing. For Pascal Normande was in the business of illusion. [p.29]

Red, the thinnest baker might say. The colour of passion, my boy, of beating hearts and action. They're the bold ones, the reds, sure to be full of adventure. Or we could pick the blue ones, like the wide sea and those mermaids singing us home. Or perhaps the green of the trees in our Tuileries.

Octavio knew his father would assign each colour he saw. The golds would contain tales of treasure hunters and lost cities, the purples would conjur [sic] magic and spirits and fairy worlds. He wondered if his father would have considered black a colour at all. Regardless, he would have started with the red ones.

[...] Imagine a woman, my boy. Watch her as she steps out of a pastry shop. She does not look your way but, oh yes, you see her. Her face, her mouth, the curve of those red lips. You cannot resist. You wonder what would it be like to kiss those lips. As red as raspberries. You bump against her and find yourself sitting in the gutter. The red of raspberries, my boy. That is the colour we'll start with. [p.235]

The reds gathered in the attic, two or three at a time. Soon stacks of books threatened to block the doorways, as though a bricklayer was using them to slowly close up the apartment. When the walls could hold no more, the floors took over. In turn they began to sag, creaking bitterly under the weight. The blues descended the spiral staircase, half a dozen books to a step. By the time they reached the bottom tread, Octavio had moved on to the greens. These filled the kitchen. Piled under the sink, wedged behind the taps, thrown on top of the cupboards, jammed into the drawers, displayed on the table, three deep along the windowsill. Books in shades of gold followed the slope from bathroom to bedroom. A platform of editions bound in grey cloth raised the bed enough that Octavio needed four thick volumes as a stool to reach the mattress. He removed the mirrored door of the armoire so the purple ones might fit inside. The drawer where he had slept as a baby now barely closed, filled as it was with books the colour of wine. There were ones that flapped in the rafters: Octavio tied lengths of rope from one beam to the next and hung them open, gently nesting the rope into the gutter of each volume. [pp.239-240]