The layered floors teemed with browsers in search of diversion, scholars scrounging for vindication, indigents seeking comfort, novelists hunting for reclaimable material, and burgeoning adolescents diligently sifting for any reference to the carnal act in verse, narrative, or diagram. And at the focal point of this kaleidoscope of desires and book spines rose the archivist’s desk: a round battlement defended by a woman who wore a black shift, a monocle on a gold chain, and her white hair in a sharply angled bob.
