It was not only in second-hand bookshops that Naude hunted, but
among the dealers in waste paper. "Thus did Poggio find Quintilian
on the counter of a wood-merchant, and Masson picked up 'Agobardus'
at the shop of a binder, who was going to use the MS. to patch his
books withal." Rossi, who may have seen Naude at work, tells us how
he would enter a shop with a yard-measure in his hand, buying books,
we are sorry to say, by the ell. "The stalls where he had passed
were like the towns through which Attila or the Tartars had swept,
with ruin in their train,--ut non hominis unius sedulitas, sed
calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum tabernas pervasisse
videatur!" Naude had sorrows of his own. In 1652 the Parliament
decreed the confiscation of the splendid library of Mazarin, which
was perhaps the first free library in Europe,--the first that was
open to all who were worthy of right of entrance. There is a
painful description of the sale, from which the book-lover will
avert his eyes. On Mazarin's return to power he managed to collect
again and enrich his stores, which form the germ of the existing
Bibliotheque Mazarine.

Among princes and popes it is pleasant to meet one man of letters,
and he the greatest of the great age, who was a bibliophile. The
enemies and rivals of Moliere--De Vise, De Villiers, and the rest--
are always reproaching him--with his love of bouquins. There is
some difference of opinion among philologists about the derivation
of bouquin, but all book-hunters know the meaning of the word. The
bouquin is the "small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold,"
which lies among the wares of the stall-keeper, patient in rain and
dust, till the hunter comes who can appreciate the quarry. We like
to think of Moliere lounging through the narrow streets in the
evening, returning, perhaps, from some noble house where he has been