Alas, why did he not oftener listen to those consolers which speak so gently and so softly, and which can bestow every blessing upon the heart that is innocent of desire? _In angello cum libello._ Therein, perhaps, resides all wisdom. But, if every one sat in his corner and read, what would books be about? They are filled with the sorrows and the errors of men, and it is by saddening us that they give us consolation. Yes, there was in Foucquet the stuff of a librarian in the great style of a Peiresc or a Naudé. But this stuff was but a fragment of the whole piece. Cæsar, also, would have been the first book-lover of his day if he had not been eager to conquer and to reign, if he had not possessed a genius for organizing Rome and the world. One needs a childlike candour and a pious zeal if one would shut oneself up with the dust of old books, with the souls of the dead. The humble book-lover who holds this pen, for his own part, savours with delight that reposeful charm, but he knows well that the purity of this charm can only be bought at the price of renunciation and resignation. A word as to what became of Foucquet's library. But let the reader not be alarmed; the fate of the twenty-seven thousand volumes which composed it will not occupy us so long as that of the two Egyptian sarcophagi. This library was sold by auction, like the rest of the Superintendent's movables. Guy Patin wrote from Paris on the 25th February, 1665: "M. Foucquet's effects are about to be sold. There is a fine library. It is said that M. Colbert wants it." Perhaps Colbert did want it, but for the King. Colbert was not a second Foucquet. Carcasi, the keeper of the Royal Library, bought for the King about thirteen thousand volumes. The accounts of the King's buildings mention, under the date of January, 1667, the payment of six thousand livres "to the Sieur Mandat, liquidator of the assets of M. Foucquet, for the price of the books which the King has had bought from the Library of Saint-Mandé." And another payment of fourteen thousand livres "to the Sieur Arnoul for books on the History of Italy, which His Majesty has also bought." As for the manuscripts, they were bought by various libraries and scattered. The catalogue which the purchasers compiled of these manuscripts forms a small duodecimo volume of sixty-two pages, entitled: _Mémoires des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de M. Foucquet, qui se vendent à Paris, chez Denis Thierry, Frédéric Léonard, Jean Dupuis, rue Saint-Jacques, et Claude Barbin, au Palais. M. D. C. LXVII._