At Autun and Lyons, both of them magnificent cities in Roman times, some very ancient books did linger, and here is room for a digression. Lyons had a Pentateuch in Latin which was a great rarity, for not only was it in uncials of the fifth century, but it was of the Old Latin version, that made from the Greek before St. Jerome made his version from the Hebrew, which we call the Vulgate. Rather before the middle of the nineteenth century an Italian adventurer of some learning and little virtue, the Chevalier Guglielmo (etc.) Libri, obtained employment under the French Government in the Department of Public Instruction, and was sent on a tour of inspection among provincial libraries. He made this the occasion for increasing a collection of MSS. which he had already begun for his private uses. Where he found that the town librarian was a good easy man, he removed (silently) from his keeping a selection of the most precious volumes, or, if it seemed unsafe to take the whole of a MS., he detached some few quires. Now and then he left a less valuable book in the place of the other. His best hunting-grounds were Tours, Orléans, and Lyons. At Lyons he conveyed away the Book of Leviticus and part of Numbers out of the Pentateuch. He had skilled workmen in his pay at Paris, who wrote names of other (generally Italian) monasteries and former owners on the first page of the stolen books, and otherwise disguised them; when he had made up a selection of a suitable bulk and attractiveness, he looked about for a wealthy purchaser, and found one in the Earl of Ashburnham, who bought _en bloc_, and whose manuscripts were not readily made accessible to the public. So the Lyons Leviticus and an illustrated sixth-century Pentateuch from Tours and many other precious things from Fleury (near Orléans) and elsewhere reposed in England until the early eighties, when M. Leopold Delisle made public the result of a most patient and most subtle investigation of the whole fraud, and a selection of the best of the plunder was got back for France. Sad to say, the municipalities which had been most negligent in keeping their MSS. refused to contribute to the recovery of them. They are still at Paris, to the advantage of students, but to the discredit of the provinces. Meanwhile Libri's reputation had been thoroughly blown upon, and he retired from France, and was dead in Italy or elsewhere before his crimes had been atoned for. A great mass of his accumulations was bought from the Ashburnhams by the Italians and is now at Florence. Madame Libri survived, like Madame Fosco, to defend his memory. To return. In spite of the long history and great wealth of Bordeaux, Marseilles, Arles, Narbonne, Toulouse, you will not trace many famous books to those places. The city which, on the whole, has preserved its early manuscripts best is Albi, but it was never a great centre of learning, and its library, though extremely interesting, is not large.