Sun of the Sleepless by Patrick Horne Page B

across her knees as she started to examine it and type up the notable details that would act as her sales description.
    It was a heavy and large tome; the front cover measured just less than forty centimetres by twenty-five centimetres which roughly correlated with the British measurement system as fifteen inches by ten inches, classifying it as a crown folio size. The binding appeared immaculate and in book condition terminology, it could be categorised as 'very fine'.
    Luxurious suede leather the colour of creamed coffee covered the boards, the pile of which had flattened to give the tactile feel of shorn velvet to a gentle touch. The spine had six raised bands, each decorated with an intricate oak leaf motif and ensconced between the top two bands was a gilded circle encapsulating a smaller filled-in circle at its centre.
    The front and back boards had the oak leaf motif scarred into the leather, a gauffered pattern creating a frame about the boards, but about one third from the top in the centre of the front board, was a magnificent gilded inlaid depiction of the sun, rays emanating from the brilliant centre disc that was possessed of a expressionless but cherubic face.
    The insides of the boards were psychedelically marbled, purple blots interspersed with white, black, red and even pink tones, the morass looking more like a modern multi-coloured illustration of jiggling amoeba in a biology textbook. It was definitely a book that begged to be handled, to be touched, regardless of the content.
    Gertrude carefully laid the front cover open and flicked to the frontispiece, an engraving of a garden apparently showing low box hedge laid out in a circular maze with a single tree at the centre. A robed man with a wooden staff walked across the maze, not following the meandering route but stepping directly toward the tree, directed by a length of rope trailed by an angelic looking figure sitting in the clouds and surmounted by a radiant triangle with a benign looking eye in the centre.
    She flicked through the pages examining further engravings and the illustrations reminded her of Masonic symbols. This was a bonus as she knew that such material always attracted a good price. She turned back to the title page, her admittedly inadequate grasp of Latin translating the heading as 'to direct the light', but she had a suspicion that although her transliteration of the verb and the noun was technically accurate, the title itself was not necessarily grammatically correct, but she could have been wrong. A small motif of a monkey with a curling tale was printed above the author's name, Rutilus Faber and the print date was indicated as 1735 - almost three hundred years old.
    Gertrude loved old books, but with a phone bill to pay along with some sizeable utility bills and not forgetting the minor repairs needed to her little van Willem , she was most interested in the profit that she could make from a quick sale. She started typing, copying keywords from the text and trying to transcribe the first couple of paragraphs, however, the antiquated style of grammar and spelling was difficult to comprehend even though she could speak, read and write modern English extremely well.
    Swearing to herself a couple of times as she reread what she had typed, she was eventually satisfied with her amended efforts and took a few of photographs of some of the engravings with her newly charged digital camera, editing the images slightly to bring out the best qualities and then loading all the text and picture files to her eBay shop.
    After she had submitted the sale, she pondered the price – six hundred Euros - she was having second thoughts that it seemed a bit high, but she also knew that buyers interested in Freemasonry would often pay large sums for apparently obscure works. She decided that it was a good starting price and if she had to reduce it later, so be it.
    Gertrude turned back to the container and selected another book, she wanted to get as much