down in a stream to the collectors.' The surviving brother bequeathed these State Papers to the Abbe de Thou (the fourth possessor of the 'Bibliotheca Thuana') who sold them to Charron de Menars; they were eventually purchased by Louis XVI., and were deposited in the Royal Library, where the printed books and certain other MSS. had been already received under a legacy from Jacques du Puy. When the historian died the brothers jointly undertook the trust that had fallen to Pierre. 'Among all the French scholars,' said Gassendi,'these two Puteani do most excel; and now, abiding with the sons of Thuanus, they sustain by all the means in their power the library and the students that have been committed to their care. Francois-Auguste de Thou, the historian's eldest son, became Grand-Master of the King's books; he added considerably to the 'Bibliotheca Thuana,' and his house became the meeting-place of the Parisian _savants_. A brilliant career was cruelly cut short by the malignity of Richelieu. The young Cinq-Mars was in a plot with the Queen and Gaston of Orleans to overthrow the Cardinal's power. His friend De Thou was aware of the design, but had taken no part in the conspiracy. The Cardinal arrested them both, and dragged them along the Rhone in a boat attached to his own barge; and De Thou was executed as a scapegoat, while most of the leaders saved their lives. The Cardinal died soon afterwards, without having confiscated the library; and it passed to Jacques-Auguste, the historian's younger son, who by a tardy act of grace had been restored to the civil rights enjoyed by his brother before his unjust conviction. He was by all accounts as great a book-collector as his father; and he had the good fortune to marry an heiress, Marie Picardet, who brought with her a large quantity of books from her father's house in Britanny. In the year 1677 the 'Bibliotheca Thuana' with all its additions passed to the Abbe Jacques-Auguste de Thou, who was soon afterwards compelled to part with it to the President Charron de Menars. St. Simon praised its new owner as a most worthy and honourable nonentity; but he had the sense to step into the breach and to save the 'Thuana' from destruction. When he sold the library to the Cardinal de Rohan, in 1706, he reserved the _Collection Du Puy_ for his daughters. It is believed that the Cardinal, through the cleverness of his secretary Oliva, obtained the historian's choice examples for less than the price of the binding. We must follow the career of the collection to its melancholy end. The Cardinal left it to his nephew the Prince de Soubise. The world knows him as the inventor of a sauce and as the general in one lost battle; but he had a higher fame among the booksellers for his prowess in the auction-room. He seems to have been the victim of a frenzy for books. He impressed them by crowds, and marshalled them in regiments and myriads. They all fell in 1789 before the hammer of the auctioneer.