d secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenl

y usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all ti

me the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rush

ed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proferred dark curses, strang

led each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote reg

ions. Others went mad... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the search

ers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero. At that time it was also hope

d that a clarification of humanity's basic mysteries - the origin of the Library and of time - might be found. It is verisimilar that these grave mysteries could be explai

ned in words: if the language of philosophers is not sufficient, the multiform Library will have produced the unprecedented language required, with its voca

bularies and grammars. For four centuries now men have exhausted the hexagons... There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performa

nce of their funcion: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the libraria