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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
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