The Elm-Tree on the Mall by Anatole France

When M. Bergeret entered the shop, Paillot, the bookseller, with a pencil thrust behind his ear, was collecting his "returns." He was stacking up the volumes whose yellow covers, after long exposure to the sunlight, had turned brown and become covered with fly-marks. These were the unsaleable copies, which he was sending back to the publishers. M. Bergeret recognised among the "returns" several works that he liked. He felt no chagrin at this, having too much taste to hope to see his favourite authors winning the votes of the crowd.

He sank down, as he was accustomed to do, in the old-book corner, and through mere habit took up the thirty-eighth volume of _l'Histoire Générale des Voyages_. The book, bound in green leather, opened of its own accord at p. 212, and M. Bergeret once more read these fatal lines: