There speaks the bibliophile, who loves books as they ought to be loved, who lives with them, asks their advice, and cherishes and protects them against their numerous enemies. An English typographer[3] thus enumerates the enemies of books: “Fire, water, gas, heat, dust, neglect, ignorance, rats, mice, and finally bookbinders,”--adding the last with the sudden anger of a man who has suffered by having some fine book hopelessly cut down. He might have mentioned an enemy still more dangerous, the most difficult of all to vanquish--an enemy of every day and hour, ever present, and ready alike for open warfare or for subterfuge: woman. With a few rare and conspicuous exceptions, women are anti-bibliophiles or book-haters. A book in their eyes is merely a newspaper: they crease and crumple it as they turn its leaves. Lacking a paper-knife to cut the edges, they use a card, a pin, or even a hair-pin. If a rare book is under discussion, they appear more interested in the smallest trifle than in all the first editions that exist. They prefer a scrap of ribbon to the most exquisite binding. If you take from its shrine a miniature volume, unique enough to make a book-lover turn pale with delight, do not trust it to a woman, for in opening it she will split its back. The best of husbands may give the key of his safe to his wife, but he must not give her, even for one moment, the key of his library. A woman should never be left alone with a book, and such in fact should be the rule with all married book-lovers. Nodier said that, after woman, books are the most delightful things in the world. Why do not women comprehend this, and increase their influence by their appreciation of books? Following the bibliomaniac who hoards, and the bibliophile who collects, according to the very correct terms of Nodier, come the amateurs of the old book-cult. Nodier and Sacy give them the incorrect title of _bouquiniste_ (dealer in old books), when their knowledge as Academicians should have made them use the word _bouquineur_ (old-book hunter) in order to avoid confusion. To their ears _bouquiniste_ evidently had a pleasing sound. How Sacy despised the collector of dirty, damaged books, which were fit only to be sent to a book-hospital, supposing such a place to exist! “I know him!” cried Sacy in a rage,--“this amateur who buys books for three or five cents, or in a moment of folly even paying as much as six cents. In other things he is a man of wit and taste, a polite man and a good companion, whose only depravity is concerning books.”