Diane de Poitiers, a true _chasseresse des bouquins_, was herself the daughter of a bibliophile. The Comte de St. Vallier loved books in Italian bindings, and there is a _Roman de Perceforest_ in the collection of the Duc d'Aumale, that bears the Saint Vallier arms and marks of ownership, though it was confidently believed to have been bound for Grolier when it belonged to King Louis-Philippe. Henri Deux and the Duchesse Diane kept a treasure of books between them in the magnificent castle of Anet: and after they were dead the books remained unknown and unnoticed in their hall until the death of the Princesse de Conde in the year 1723. The sale which then took place was a revelation of beauty. The books were in good condition, and were all clad in sumptuous bindings. There was a remarkable diversity in their contents, the Fathers and the poets standing side by side with treatises upon medicine and the management of a household, as if they had been acquired in great part by virtue of the tax upon the publishers. Most of them, we are told, were bought by the 'intrepid book-hunter' M. Guyon de Sardieres, whose whole library in its turn was engulphed in the miscellaneous collections of the Duc de la Valliere. An article in the _Bibliophile Francais_ contains a curious argument in favour of Diane de Poitiers, as being one of a band of devoted Frenchwomen who saved their country from foreign ideas. We are reminded of the patriotism of Agnes Sorel, and of the excellent influence of Gabrielle d'Estrees. The Duchesse d'Estampes, we are told, preserved Francis I. from the influence of the Italian renaissance, and prevented the subjugation of France 'by a Benvenuto or Da Vinci'; and in the same way, when Catherine de Medici was preparing to introduce other strange fashions, Diane came forward in her 'magical beauty' and saved the originality of her nation.