Felix Perdreau moving about the workroom on the first floor of his cottage was, as ever, a theatrical figure more elegant than reality by the merest fraction. He was dressed in a tattered gold brocade dressing gown with a high collar and long full skirts, his cuffs folded back to leave his forearms bare. With his white flecked beard and falling forelock he suggested an alchemist from a gothic novel rather than an astute restorer of rare editions. Books lined the walls and overflowed in drunken columns onto the floor. A pot of glue which had recently been heated was still steaming in a saucepan, a hand press and a bench littered with tools, chemicals and inks added to an atmosphere of erudite hocus-pocus.
At the moment he was engaged in the rewarding business of blending two copies of Tamb
