sieur de Villenave we propose to depict, though without much hope of producing more than an imperfect sketch.
The second floor on which they were situated was divided into a far greater number of separate rooms than the first, and comprised, first, a landing decorated with plaster busts, an ante-room and four other rooms. These apartments we shall not classify as drawing-room, bedroom, working-room, dressing-room, etc., etc. What had Monsieur de Villenave to do with suchlike superfluous luxuries? He had five book-rooms, five print-rooms, and that was all he wanted. The five rooms contained perhaps forty thousand books and four thousand portfolios of prints.
The antechamber by itself formed a huge library. It had two doors,—opening, the one to the right into Monsieur de Villenave's bedroom, which again gave access by means of a passage behind the bed-recess to a large closet lighted by windows in the partition wall. The little end door led to a large room, itself again opening into a smaller one.
The large room in question opening into a smaller one, not only had, like its neighbour, its four walls fitted with book-cases crammed with books on the higher shelves and with portfolios in the lower compartments, but besides this a highly ingenious contrivance had been fixed in the middle of both rooms, somewhat resembling the erections we often see in the centre of a drawing-room, affording seats for guests all round it. Thanks to this construction, the middle of the room, which thus offered a second library inside the first, left very little free space, in fact only so minute a quadrangular area as sufficed for one person's moving about at a time. A second would have blocked the way; hence it was a very rare occurrence for Monsieur de Villenave to admit anyone, even the most intimate of friends, into this sanctum sanctorum.
Some few privileged individuals had pushed their heads in at the door, and across the learned dust that danced incessantly in the sparse sunbeams that penetrated this tabernacle, had obtained a fugitive glance at Monsieur de Villenave's bibliographical mysteries, much as Clodius, thanks to his disguise in woman's weeds, had contrived from the atrium of the Temple of Isis to catch a glimpse of the mysteries of the Bona Dea.
There were kept the autographs; the age of Louis XIV. alone filled five hundred portfolios. There were kept the papers of Louis XV., the correspondence of Malesherbes, four hundred autographs of Voltaire, two hundred of Bossuet. There were preserved the genealogies of all the noble houses of France, with particulars of their alliances and documentary proofs of their claims. There were stored the drawings by Rafael, Giulio Romano, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, by Lebrun, Lesueur, David, Lethière, the collections of minerals and rare herbs, the priceless manuscripts, some of them unique.
There in a word was the result of fifty years' incessant labour, mitigated by one controlling idea, stimulated day by day and hour by hour by one absorbing passion,—the passion at once so mild and so fervent of the collector, to which he dedicates his intellect and on which he stakes his joy, his happiness, his very life.
These two were the rooms of price. It is very certain that Monsieur de Villenave, who had on more than one occasion come near giving his life for nothing, would not have parted with the contents of these two rooms for a hundred thousand crowns.
The only rooms left to mention are the bedrooms and the dark closet, lying to the right of the antechamber and parallel with the two apartments we have just described. The first of the two was Monsieur de Villenave's bedroom, a bedroom wherein the bed was by far the least conspicuous object, concealed as it was in a recess closed by wooden folding doors.
It was here Monsieur de Villenave used to receive his friends. Here it was possible at a pinch to walk about, and even under difficulties to sit down. We will describe how the latter fact could be performed, and under what circumstances the former was practicable.
The old servant-maid,—I have forgotten her name,—would announce a visitor to Monsieur de Villenave, half opening the door of his room. The action invariably surprised Monsieur de Villenave in the middle of classifying a new acquisition or dreaming a day dream or taking a nap.
"Eh! what is it, Françoise?" (We will assume her name was Françoise.) "Good God! can't I be left a minute in peace?"
