Nevertheless, with its good sides and its bad, the epidemic spread, and not only in France, but in other countries as well. We will, however, confine our study of this epoch to France as for the purposes of this brief résumé of the collecting craze France was ahead of the other countries, and thus by the side of the wise and genuine lover of art, possessed all the other degrees of Collectomania. Though conforming to fashion, every one has his own views on the matter, so that there are dreamers and speculators on all kinds of antiques, but painting is given the preference. “Pictures are bullion,” writes the fat Coulanges to his cold-blooded and well-behaved cousin, Mme. de Sévigné, “you can sell them at twice their price whenever you like.” In fact during one of his journeys to Italy, Coulanges, who had caught the collecting fever, made a considerable sum of money in buying and selling pictures, so much money that it spoilt his taste for, as a chroniclist says, “The treasure, which he saw piled up at the Hotel de Guise awoke in him more expensive tastes.” His wife, Marie-Angelique du Gue-Bagnol, collected _raretés curieuses_. Mme. de Sévigné tells us of her delight when she saw in her cousin’s house a looking-glass that had been owned by Queen Marguerite. At this epoch the art and curio market comprised all sorts of odd characters and, as might be expected, the subject gave ample food to writers and chroniclers for skits. La Bruyère is not alone in making sport of the obsessed art collector and crazy curio-hunter. From Molière to the Italian Goldoni the antiquary and his victim are capital subjects. Poetry also contributes its sarcasm. In France some of the minor and justly obscure poets are very useful in the reconstruction of our _milieu_. There are even chronicles written in verse. For instance, Marie-Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV, goes to see Caterine Henriette Bellier de Beauvais, the first lady of the bedchamber of the queen dowager Anne of Austria, a lady who is evidently collecting art. The poetical chronicle at once informs the public that:-- Mercredi, notre auguste Reine Fut chez madame de Beauvais Pour de son aimable palais Voir les merveilles étonnantes Et raretés surprenantes.... We will spare the reader the description of the collection given in a sort of litany of praise, a sequence of lines like the following:-- Tant de belles orfevreries Tant d’éclatantes pierreries * * * * * Tant de vases si précieux, Tant de bustes et tant d’images, etc. Le Maisel Prieur des Roches is crazy for books, and like a true bibliomaniac he never reads his books, which are generally bought for the title, etc. This of course is more than enough for his introduction into one of these rhyming chronicles, called _Rymaille_:-- Les livres Des Roches en belle couverture, Mais leur Maistre n’en donne Science ny Lecture.