We went at once to seek M. de L'Epinois, but learnt that he had left Rome early that morning.
Our work was too far advanced to be given up, and so we went on, in the hope that even now there might be some little place in the world for it. By the time Epinois's book reached us the copying was finished, and we were correcting the proofs by the originals. It was not without value, even for our enterprise, for we compared our proofs with it line by line and word by word, made notes of deviations, and then went to the Vatican to see which was right. We readily acknowledge that in this way we discovered and corrected many errors which had crept into our copy. The variations which still exist are all well known to us, and are left, either because Epinois is mistaken, or we consider our reading to be the best. This is not the place for a criticism of his work; we will only bear witness, after comparing it with the original, to its accuracy.
