Under Henri II. the Fontainebleau collection was somewhat pillaged for Diana of Poitiers, but, as a corrective for this dilapidation, the King adopted a measure, since preserved, which substituted for acquisitions a regular and uninterrupted supply; this was the contribution by publishers to the library of one bound copy on vellum of all the works printed under privilege. The ordinance was made in 1556; the successors of Henri II. had only this means of increasing the number of their volumes, with the exception that Charles IX. expended a large sum in the purchase of Grolier's collection of medals. Such was the working of the royal library for about a half-century, but the idea of making it public had not come. Diffused as was then the passion for books, it had not yet been democratised to the point of being understood by the people. Amateurs and lovers of reading formed special collections in their houses, at times rivalling that of the King. Then the fashion was no more to lay the books on their sides, but they were now ranged to allow room for new acquisitions. Henri IV., who had not his great-uncle's predilection for Fontainebleau, commanded the removal to Paris of the books buried in the castle. He added to them those of Catherine de Medicis coming from Marshal Strozzi; and as the college of Clermont had become vacant by the dispersion of the Jesuits, he lodged the library in 1599 in one of the rooms of that establishment, under the care of James Augustus de Thou, master of the library. We now see the royal collection brought to Paris, which it has never quitted; but before its definitive installation, before it was made public, it passed through a century, during which additions were made, purchases increased, and the number of manuscripts and printed books augmented in enormous proportions. Henri IV. desired to place it near the court, to avoid pillage and to have the chief librarian near to him. The return of the Jesuits in 1604 upset the first establishment a little; the college of Clermont was evacuated; the books were transported to the Cordeliers and distributed in rooms on the ground and first floors, whence the names of upper and lower libraries. There was a mass of volumes very little used, for the public did not enjoy them, and the King held them as his own; but the time was near when the collection was to take a very serious step under the influence of the brothers Dupuy in 1645, and afterwards of Jerome Bignon. Always shut up in the incommodious chambers of the Cordeliers, the library contained 5,259 volumes, manuscript and printed, perhaps less than some private libraries; after the Dupuys it had at least 10,329 printed books.