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Gedeon was forced to leave in a hurry if he was to see his brother again before he passed away and, with only the faintest of hesitations, he entrusted the care of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository to Mr. Berger. He left Mr. Berger with the keys, and the number of Mr. Gedeon’s sister-in-law in Bootle in case of emergencies, then rushed off to catch the last evening train north.
    Alone for the first time in the library, Mr. Berger opened the suitcase that he had packed upon receiving the summons from Mr. Gedeon. He removed from it a bottle of brandy and his favorite fountain pen. He poured himself a large snifter of the brandy—larger than was probably advisable, he would later accept—and retrieved the Crowell edition of Anna Karenina from its shelf. He laid it on Mr. Gedeon’s desk and turned to the relevant section. He took a sip of brandy, then another, and another. He was, after all, about to alter one of the treasures of nineteenth-century literature, so a stiff drink seemed like a very good idea.
    He looked at the glass. It was now almost empty. He refilled it, took a large strengthening swig, and uncapped his pen. He offered a silent prayer of apology to the god of letters, and with three swift dashes of his pen removed a single paragraph.
    It was done.
    He refilled his glass. It had all been easier than expected. He let the ink dry on the Crowell edition, and restored it to its shelf. He was, by now, more than a little tipsy. Another title caught his eye as he returned to the desk: Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, in the first edition by Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., London, 1891.
    Mr. Berger had always hated the ending of Tess of the d’Urbervilles .
    Oh well, he thought: in for a penny, in for a pound.
    He took the book from the shelf, stuck it under his arm, and was soon happily at work on Chapters LVIII and LIX. He worked all through the night, and by the time he fell asleep the bottle of brandy was empty, and books surrounded him.
    In truth, Mr. Berger had got a little carried away.
XIV
    In the history of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, the brief period that followed Mr. Berger’s “improvements” to great novels and plays is known as the “Confusion,” and has come to be regarded as a lesson in why such experiments should generally be avoided.
    The first clue Mr. Gedeon had that something was amiss was when he passed the Liverpool Playhouse on his way to catch the early afternoon train, his brother having miraculously recovered to such an extent that he was threatening to sue his physicians, and discovered that the theater was playing The Comedy of Macbeth . He did a quick double take and immediately sought out the nearest bookshop. There he found a copy of The Comedy of Macbeth , along with a critical commentary labeling it “one of the most troubling of Shakespeare’s later plays, due to its curious mixture of violence and inappropriate humor bordering on early bedroom farce.”
    â€œGood Lord,” said Mr. Gedeon aloud. “What has he done? For that matter, what else has he done?”
    Mr. Gedeon thought hard for a time, trying to recall the novels or plays about which Mr. Berger had expressed serious reservations. He seemed to recall Mr. Berger complaining that the ending of A Tale of Two Cities had always made him cry. An examination of a copy of the book in question revealed that it now ended with Sydney Carton being rescued from the guillotine by an airship piloted by the Scarlet Pimpernel, with a footnote advising that this had provided the inspiration for a later series of novels by Baroness Orczy.
    â€œOh God,” said Mr. Gedeon.
    Then there was Hardy.
    Tess of the d’Urbervilles now culminated in Tess’s escape from prison, engineered by Angel Clare and a team of demolition experts, while The Mayor of Casterbridge had Michael Henchard living in a rose-covered cottage near his