In 1823, Charles Nodier was appointed librarian of this library, and left the rue de Choiseul, where he lived, to establish himself in his new habitation. But the building that was often the subject of illustrations was not a very magnificent place to live in! On the first landing of a flight of steps with massive balustrades, you came upon a badly fitting door on the left which led to a bricked corridor; the dining-room and the office were paved with bricks like the corridor. Three other rooms completed the suite--three luxurious rooms, with parquetried floors and panelled walls: one was Madame Nodier's bedroom; the other the salon; and the third the workroom, library and bedchamber of Charles. Charles led two separate existences: his week's existence was that of a worker and bibliophile; his Sunday existence was that of a society man and host. Nodier was an adorable personality; I have never met nor ever known anyone so learned, so much of an artist and yet so kindly in disposition as he, save, perhaps, Méry. And though he possessed plenty of faults he hadn't a vice, and his winning faults sprang from the originality of the man of genius. Nodier was extravagant, careless, dilatory; but his was the delightful idleness of a Figaro. He might, perhaps, have been accused of being rather too worldly; but that, too, sprang from his carelessness, in not taking the trouble to examine into his feelings. It was rather the whole community of martyrs, so to speak, that Nodier loved after this fashion; he had an inner circle of privileged friends whom he loved with all his heart; others, he liked only intellectually. Nodier was _par excellence_ a man of learning: he knew everything and a host of things besides; for he exercised the prerogative of men of genius: if he did not know a thing he invented his knowledge of it, and it must be confessed his invention was generally far more likely, far more ingenious and romantic and specious and, I will venture to say, far nearer the truth than the reality itself. It will be readily guessed that, with this gift of invention, Nodier was a veritable mine of paradoxes. But he never tried to force you to accept these paradoxes; he created three-fourths of his paradoxes for his own diversion. One day, when I had been lunching with a minister, I was asked-- "How did the luncheon pass off?" "All right," I replied; "but if I hadn't been there myself I should have been horribly bored!" And so it was with Nodier; for fear of being bored, he made up paradoxes, just as I told stories.