In order not to stray too far from the pictures of other days which Nodier evoked, let us look at the charming type of a book-collector who was worthy of the name: Silvestre de Sacy. During the eighteen years of the reign of Louis Philippe, Sacy might have been seen lounging along the quays, on his way to the Palais Bourbon, where he followed the parliamentary debates in his journalistic vocation, carrying almost always a selection of Madame de Sévigné’s letters in his hand. When he returned home it was to take Montaigne, Bossuet, or some other classic, clothed in bindings worthy of them, from a shelf close at hand. By this daily reading he added to his mixture of Christianity and philosophy; but as he cared only for the best editions, he was afraid of rich men, and regarded them as the absorbers of fine books. _Multi vocati, pauci lecti_,--many are called, but few read,--was what D’Argenson had already proposed as an inscription for the library of a _fermier général_.[2] Sacy, when he dreamed, on the eve of a book sale, of this or that volume which he coveted, and which he feared he might not be able to hold successfully against the fancy or caprice of some financier, would have palpitation of the heart. Prévost-Paradol wrote of him: “This Christian, whom some would like to call austere, if the word austerity could cover so much forbearance and perfect gentleness, became a sort of epicure in all that concerned his reading.” The love of books was such a part of his life that when some one asked for his autograph, to add to one of his lithographic portraits,--a picture in which he lives again, peaceful, mischievous, and benevolent, all at the same time, like a citizen of the true, liberal, and literary race,--he could not refrain from declaring, in a half page which is reproduced in facsimile, that of all passions that of the book-collector is ever the best. Even though his eyes suffered severely from fatigue, it did not discourage his ardent affection for his books. Has he not said in one of those confidences in which lies the charm of his criticisms, “If I become blind I think I shall still take pleasure in holding a beautiful book in my hand. I shall at least feel the softness of its binding, and imagine that I can see it: I have seen so many!” “O my beloved books,” he wrote in connection with the dispersion of a library, “some day you will also be exhibited in an auction-room, when you will pass into other hands, owners perhaps less worthy of you than your present master. Yet these books that I have selected, one by one, are truly mine, collected by the sweat of my brow; and I love them so, that it seems to me they have become a part of my very soul by such a long and precious intercourse.”