reading the proscribed 'Tartuffe,' or giving an imitation of the
rival actors at the Hotel Bourgogne. Absent as the contemplateur
is, a dingy book-stall wakens him from his reverie. His lace
ruffles are soiled in a moment with the learned dust of ancient
volumes. Perhaps he picks up the only work out of all his library
that is known to exist,--un ravissant petit Elzevir, 'De Imperio
Magni Mogolis' (Lugd. Bat. 1651). On the title-page of this tiny
volume, one of the minute series of 'Republics' which the Elzevirs
published, the poet has written his rare signature, "J. B. P.
Moliere," with the price the book cost him, "1 livre, 10 sols." "Il
n'est pas de bouquin qui s'echappe de ses mains," says the author of
'La Guerre Comique,' the last of the pamphlets which flew about
during the great literary quarrel about "L'Ecole des Femmes."
Thanks to M. Soulie the catalogue of Moliere's library has been
found, though the books themselves have passed out of view. There
are about three hundred and fifty volumes in the inventory, but
Moliere's widow may have omitted as valueless (it is the foible of
her sex) many rusty bouquins, now worth far more than their weight
in gold. Moliere owned no fewer than two hundred and forty volumes
of French and Italian comedies. From these he took what suited him
wherever he found it. He had plenty of classics, histories,
philosophic treatises, the essays of Montaigne, a Plutarch, and a
Bible.

We know nothing, to the regret of bibliophiles, of Moliere's taste
in bindings. Did he have a comic mask stamped on the leather (that
device was chased on his plate), or did he display his cognizance
and arms, the two apes that support a shield charged with three
mirrors of Truth? It is certain--La Bruyere tells us as much--that
the sillier sort of book-lover in the seventeenth century was much