The story has a detailed and realistic setting in the tiny decaying cathedral city of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, at the foot of the Pyrenees in southern France. An English tourist spends a day photographing the interior of the cathedral and is encouraged by the sacristan to buy an unusual manuscript volume. This, he concludes, had been created long ago, by cutting up volumes in the old cathedral library, by canon Albéric de Mauléon
