Why do you have this? I asked him. Some of us, he said, retain an appreciation for the old things. But these were supposed to have been burned, I said. There were house-to-house searches, bonfires . . . What’s dangerous in the hands of the multitudes, he said, with what may or may not have been irony, is safe enough for those whose motives are . . . Beyond reproach, I said. He nodded gravely. Impossible to tell whether or not he meant it.
