In fact, each year saw an increase in the number of publishers in corporation, with syndicate and adjuncts. Under the reign of Louis XIII., the single year 1610 had fifty to take rank, and among them Antoine Vitré, who was to become the most illustrious of his contemporaries. But, as there were no more than six printers, it may be inferred that all the rest were booksellers, in the true sense of the word, of those who encumbered afterwards the great _salle_ of which Sauval speaks. Antoine Vitré was syndic in May, 1643, on the accession of Louis XIV. He had four adjuncts. With him the Book marked the solemn style that the commencement of the century had given to it. Royal printer for the Oriental languages from 1621, he undertook a Syriac work, the first that was attempted in Paris. The project of a Polyglot Bible gave him the idea of acquiring for the King the Oriental manuscripts and matrices of Savary de Brèves. The King left to him the care of negotiating the business, but did not reimburse him without numerous difficulties, in the midst of which the printer was made to lose the means of conveniently continuing his trade. The advocate Le Jay charging himself with the enormous expenses necessitated by the Polyglot Bible, it was composed in the hope that Cardinal Richelieu would pay the cost. He was willing to do so, but required that his name should figure on the book; and as Le Jay, an independent man, formally opposed it, Vitré met with ill-will from the Minister, which increased from day to day. In 1645 the impression was finished, but Le Jay was ruined, and if we admire the paper, the type, and the extraordinary size of the nine volumes of the Polyglot Bible, we find in it so many faults, errors, and misprints that it has fallen to nearly nothing, hardly being worth its binding. There were terrible mortifications in the business, and Vitré had to submit to them more than any one. Nevertheless he did not let his presses stand still, and he published successively Arabic, Turkish, and Persian works. His action against the Savary heirs, as representing the King, in the acquisition mentioned above, continued also after the impression of the Bible, and hindered his progress. He struggled on; and the assembly of clergy, of which he was the printer, sought to help him out of his difficulties. The matter being once terminated, the Cardinal being dead, and Vitré having been named by Colbert director of the Royal Printing House in place of Cramoisy, he died in his turn, and was later accused of having destroyed the types and matrices of the Polyglot Bible, so that they should not be used after him. This fable, long accredited, has since been ascertained to be false, for the punches and matrices passed to the Royal Library, thence to the Royal Printing House, reorganised in 1691.