Rollo in Paris

by Jacob Abbott

After a time, they came to a long, straight street, which led across the city, through the centre of it, from the river to the Boulevards; and when they were about in the middle of this street, the attention of the children was attracted by a very long and gloomy-looking building, which formed one side of the street for a considerable distance before them. It had no windows toward the street, but only a range of square recesses in the walls, of the form of windows, but without any glass. Jennie asked Mr. George if it was the prison.

"Not exactly," said Mr. George; "and yet there is one room in it where there are more than a hundred men, and they are not permitted to speak a loud word."

"Let's go and see them," said Rollo.

"Very well," said Mr. George; "we will."

So saying, he called upon the coachman to stop opposite to a great archway which opened through the building near the middle of it. Mr. George and the children descended from the carriage and went in under the archway. Looking through, they saw a large court yard, with grass, and trees, and a fountain. They did not, however, go on into this court yard, but turned to the right to a very broad flight of steps which seemed to lead into the building. There was a man in uniform, with a cocked hat upon his head, who stood in the passage way to guard the entrance. He made no objection, however, to the party's going in; and so they all went on up the stairway.

After passing through a series of magnificent passages and vestibules, with very broad staircases, and massive stone balustrades, and other marks of a very ancient and venerable style of architecture, Mr. George led the way through an open door, where the children saw extended before them, as far as the eye could reach, a long range of rooms, opening into one another, and all filled with bookshelves and books. The rooms had windows only on one side; that is, on the side next the courtyard; and the doors which led from one room to the other were all near that side of the room. Thus three sides of each room were almost wholly unbroken, and they were all filled with bookshelves and books. The doors which led from one room to another were all in a range; so that standing at one end, opposite to one of these doors, the spectator could look through the whole range of rooms to the other end. The distance was, moreover, so great, that, though there was a group of several persons standing at the farther end of the range of rooms at the time that Rollo entered, they looked so small and so indistinct that Rollo could not count them to tell how many there were.

"It is a library," said Rollo.

"Yes," said Mr. George, "it is the National Library of Paris, one of the largest libraries in the world. The books have been accumulating here for ages."

"I don't see what can be the use of such a large library," said Rollo; "nobody can possibly read all the books."

"No," said Mr. George, "they cannot read them all; but they may wish to consult them. There are often particular reasons for seeing some particular book, which was published so long ago that it is not now to be found in common bookstores; in such cases, people come here, and they are pretty sure to find the book in this collection."