Accordingly
he carried his paper to Libri, a total stranger to him, and asked
the old man, as deferentially as possible, to tell him whether
the lines had any meaning. Had Adams not been an ignorant person
he would have known all about Libri, but his ignorance was vast,
and perhaps was for the best. Libri looked at the paper, and then
looked again, and at last bade him sit down and wait. Half an
hour passed before he called Adams back and showed him these
lines:--
"Or questo credo ben che una elleria
Te offende tanto che te offese il core.
Perche sei grande nol sei in tua volia;
Tu vedi e gia non credi il tuo valore;
Passate gia son tutte gelosie;
Tu sei di sasso; non hai piu dolore."
As far as Adams could afterwards recall it, this was Libri's
reading, but he added that the abbreviations were many and
unusual; that the writing was very ancient; and that the word he
read as "elleria" in the first line was not Italian at all.
By this time, one had got too far beyond one's depth to ask
questions. If Libri could not read Italian, very clearly Adams
had better not offer to help him. He took the drawing, thanked
everybody, and having exhausted the experts of the British
Museum, took a cab to Woolner's studio, where he showed the
figure and repeated Reed's opinion. Woolner snorted: "Reed's a
fool!" he said; "he knows nothing about it; there maybe a rotten
line or two, but the drawing's all right.
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