- We kick off with a short epigraph from Randolph Henry Ash's poem The Garden of Proserpina. The excerpt is chock-full of symbolic imagery that blends biblical narratives and mythic legends, and it hints at secret treasures waiting to be discovered. Foreshadowing much?
- The chapter itself gets underway as Roland Mitchell lays his hands on a dusty old book that one of the librarians of the London Library has brought up for him. The book is a well-worn copy of Giambattista Vico's Principj di Scienza Nuova (that Principles of a New Science for the rest of us), and it used to belong to Randolph Henry Ash. Roland's job for the day is to see if any passages in the book may have inspired parts of Ash's Garden of Proserpina.
- The librarian wipes some of the dust off the book, and Roland undoes the bindings. When he does, the book springs open to reveal dozens of pieces of paper with notes written on them. It seems clear that no one has touched them since the book was bundled away, and Roland is going to be the first Ash scholar to set eyes on them.
- Roland gets down to work and spends a good forty-five minutes taking notes for his supervisor, James Blackadder. Suddenly, as he moves innocently from one page to another, he finds two folded sheets of paper tucked away inside.
- Roland unfolds the pages and reads them, and he is totally shocked to discover that both of them contain drafts of a letter that Ash composed to an unnamed, not-his-wife woman.
- Roland has no idea who the unnamed lady might have been, and he's especially surprised by the tone of the letters. To him, they seem uncharacteristically "urgent" (1.22), and they reveal a more passionate and lively Randolph Henry Ash than the "guarded, courteous," and faithfully married man that Roland thought he knew (1.22).
- On impulse, Roland slips the letters into one of his own books, then gets back to work.
- When the library closes for the day, Roland returns the Scienza Nuova to the librarians—minus two significant pieces of paper, that is—and waltzes out of the library with an incredible discovery hidden away in his briefcase.