We can introduce you to men of other days in their libraries: a very good place to study them sympathetically.
Among other charming facts, we can assure you that even during the confusion of a period of infinite intrigue complicated by religious wars and the Fronde, Richelieu and Mazarin found time to play at bibliomania, and perhaps we can persuade you that of all their games it was the most profitable. The executive Mazarin got hold of an invaluable expert, Naudé, who brought him bargains by the yard. What fun they must have had out of it,—Naudé literally taking a measuring-stick with him when he went “book-hunting,” and “the stalls where he had passed were like the towns through which Attila or the Tartars had swept!” But the result was different. Deserving books were sumptuously decked out in red and olive morocco with gold-tooled cardinal hats thereon, and took their rightful place in Mazarin’s palace, that Earthly Paradise of the bibliophile graced by beautiful books and gentle readers, for Mazarin’s library was cordially free, the first really free library in France.
It is true that Saint Louis, always open to a beautiful idea, hearing of a sultan who had had copies made of the manuscripts of his realm for the benefit of the savants, endeavored to follow the example of the Moslem. Accordingly he made a beautiful collection of copies which were kept in the royal chapel—hardly a convenient place for the reading public; but then there was no reading public.
However humble a Christian, however gentle a knight Saint Louis may have been, he was destitute of one instinct of the democrat. After his death his collection was broken up, but his idea descended to Charles the Wise, who practically started the Royal Library which, joined to the Mazarin, developed into the present Bibliotheque Nationale.
As the oldest branch of the Public Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale occupies the ancestral home, the Palais Mazarin at Paris, where Mazarin’s motto, “Time and I,” rings forth in the majesty of accomplishment.
As “Ever since the days of Captain Kidd, the Yankees think there’s money hid,” so ever since the disappearance of Molière’s library the bibliophiles think there’s treasure hid. Only one book which belonged to that prince of bibliophiles has turned up so far, a little Elzevir of 1651, in which he obligingly wrote his name and the price, 1 livre, 10 sous. But think of his two hundred and forty odd comedies which he handled so deftly both in the letter and in the spirit, “taking his property wherever he found it!” What pearls of price if one could only trace them!
We know this collection was broken up; it cannot be that every single book has perished. One is almost justified in counting such chickens before they are hatched. Molière was not only one of the greatest but one of the most lovable of authors—that quality we collectors value so highly! Why a book of his would be like a relic of a saint (there is a bit of mediævalism in every good bibliophile); a saint, a bibliophile of other days, an actor, a gentle reader and a genius! What might not any one of them bring? Ah, there is still a golden fleece for the quest of the Romantic Modern.
Romance will always deal in talismans. We bibliophiles make ours a thing of the mind, which we lay away between the lines of some gentle old volume, hoping that some day, somewhere in the vague realm of Books, it may work its pleasant magic upon some unknown comrade.