Combeferre grinned in recognition. "That sounds very much like my days since I have gotten here," he said. "The sheer variety alone - history, and politics, and literature, going back a hundred years or more. I saw some titles that were popular in my own time. The libraries of La Sorbonne were magnificent, of course, but these are open to everyone. Remarkable, n'est pas?" He ducked his head sheepishly, realizing how he had gone on.

'Large and clean' might have been vague, but the image those words brought to mind was decidedly foreign. Combeferre shook his head with wonder. "Nothing like the hospitals I know, then," he observed wryly. "How do they keep it so clean?" The question was half rhetorical. "I have read something about those advances. Antibiotics. Vaccines. Diseases annihilated in one fell swoop."