“Are these original drawings?” asked M. Lerond.
“Very probably,” replied M. de Brécé.
“They are signed,” went on M. Lerond, “and I think I can decipher the name of Sebastian Leclerc.”
“Maybe,” answered M. de Brécé.
These priceless shelves contained, as M. Lerond remarked, books by Tillemont on Roman and Church history, the statute book of the province, and innumerable Fœdera by old doctors at law; he unearthed works on theology, on controversy, and on hagiology, long genealogical histories, old editions of Greek and Latin classics, and some of those enormous books, bigger than atlases, written on the occasion of the marriage of a king or his entry into Paris, or to celebrate his convalescence or his victories.
“This is the oldest part of the library,” said M. de Brécé, “the Marshal’s collection. Here,” he added, opening two or three other cases, “are the additions of Duc Jean.”
“Louis XVI’s minister, surnamed the ‘Good Duke’?” asked M. Lerond.
“Just so,” replied M. de Brécé.
Duc Jean’s collection took up all that side of the wall containing the mantelpiece and also the side looking out upon the little town. M. Lerond read out the titles stamped in gold between two bands, that decorated the backs of the volumes: Encyclopédie méthodique; Œuvres de Montesquieu; Œvres de Voltaire; Œuvres de Rousseau, de l’abbé Mably, de Condillac; and Histoire des Établissements Européens dans les Indes, by Raynal. He then glanced through the lesser poets and romancers with the vignettes of Grécourt, Dorat, and Saint-Lambert; the Boccaccio illustrated by Marillier, and the edition of La Fontaine, published by the “Fermiers Généraux.”
“The pictures are rather free,” remarked the Duke. “I have been compelled to destroy certain works of the same period, the illustrations of which were really licentious.”