Ambrosio’s hand slips off the desk, and he stumbles slightly. Everything in Harold wants to help up this pathetic drunkard, but he restrains himself. There is something deeply obscene and despairing in this man; it is almost pitiable. The man flails about for a moment, and when he regains his balance, he looks up and grins, as though it were all a joke.

‘I apologise,’ he says. ‘You see before you the other reason I could not write a sensible treatise. I was a good student once, but now my Latin is almost gone. I never finished my studies. You see, I loved too many whores; drank off too many flagons; fell in love with easy pleasures, gambled away all my books – I had a little collection once, it was my pride and joy; I was always falling out of grace, always losing a little more of what little I started with, but what most killed my ambition, ended it entirely, was—’

His face grows pale and he feels his own neck with both his hands. He was so full of words, Harold thinks, and now he is so tongue-tied.

‘What would you have written if you had done so?’ Harold says, his voice almost gentle.

‘The properties,’ de Flunkl says, shaking his head. ‘What of the properties?’

‘It would have had two parts,’ Ambrosio says slowly, ‘one for each group that could most endanger the estate; and its conclusion would have been how they could never undo it, even if they wanted it undone. If I had written it in some easy style it would have made a great accomplishment, been appraised and mulled over in more learned circles.’

‘Tell me it,’ Harold says.

‘What is this?’ de Flunkl hisses at Harold. ‘What are you doing?’