Above the lintel of his library door, Pixerecourt had this couplet
carved -


"Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete,
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate."


M. Paul Lacroix says he would not have lent a book to his own
daughter. Once Lacroix asked for the loan of a work of little
value. Pixerecourt frowned, and led his friend beneath the doorway,
pointing to the motto. "Yes," said M. Lacroix, "but I thought that
verse applied to every one but me." So Pixerecourt made him a
present of the volume.

We cannot all imitate this "immense" but unamiable amateur.
Therefore, bibliophiles have consoled themselves with the inventions
of book-plates, quaint representations, perhaps heraldic, perhaps
fanciful, of their claims to the possession of their own dear
volumes. Mr. Leicester Warren and M. Poulet Malassis have written
the history of these slender works of art, and each bibliophile may
have his own engraved, and may formulate his own anathemas on people
who borrow and restore not again. The process is futile, but may
comfort the heart, like the curses against thieves which the Greeks
were wont to scratch on leaden tablets, and deposit in the temple of
Demeter. Each amateur can exercise his own taste in the design of a
book-plate; and for such as love and collect rare editions of
"Homer," I venture to suggest this motto, which may move the heart
of the borrower to send back an Aldine copy of the epic -