ene Gaignat pass, and the bustling La Valliere; the Duc d'Estrees is
recognised as a busy book-hunter, and there are the physicians Hyacinthe
Baron and Falconnet whose keenness no prey could escape. We can
distinguish the forms of the elegant '_bibliomanes_' to whom their books
were as pictures or as jewels to be enclosed in a shrine; there is Count
d'Hoym with a house full of treasures, and Boisset and Girardot de
Prefond with their cabinets of marvels. If the crowds in the
old-fashioned libraries are like the multitude at Babel, these tall
volumes in crushed morocco and 'triple gold bands' remind us of what our
antiquaries have said of books glimmering in their wire cases 'like
eastern beauties peering through their jalousies.' We ought to say
something of M. de Chamillard, best known in his public capacity as a
good match for the King at billiards and as the minister who proposed the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In private life Michael de Chamillard
was a virtuoso with well-filled galleries and portfolios; and he had
assembled a large company of books of fashionable appearance. But our
real interest is not so much with the Minister of Billiards, as M. Uzanne
described him, but rather with his wife and three daughters, who were all
true female bibliophiles. The eldest daughter, the Marquise de Dreux, was
wife of the Grand Master of the Ceremonies; but though his collection was
gay and polite the Marquise insisted on a separate establishment for the
books that she had discovered and bought and bound. The Duchesse de la
Feuillade and the Duchesse de Lorges insisted, like their elder sister,
on having libraries for their separate use. The minister's wife was
celebrated for the splendour of her books, and marvellous prices have
been paid for specimens of her earlier style. But 'little Madame de
Chamillard' attached herself in all things to the Maintenon, and followed
the uncrowned queen in abandoning the paths of vanity; she gave up the
world, so far as gilt arabesques and crushed morocco were concerned, and
dressed all her later acquisitions _a la Janseniste_, in plain leather
with perhaps the thinnest line of blind-tooling for an ornament.

Charles du Fay was a captain in the Guards, compelled by his misfortunes
to confine himself to the battles of the book-sale. He lost a leg at the
bombardment of Brussels in 1695; and though he was promoted to a company
in the Guards, it became at last apparent that he could not s