Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/21

Rh new cutting, like a skilled miner excavating a trench, through the typographical obstacle, thus making it possible to arrive in front of the drawing, which itself was in front of his bed.

Arrived there, the visitor could only repeat: "Ah, what a perfectly charming pastel!"

"Yes" Monsieur de Villenave would answer with that air of old fashioned courtesy I have only known in him and two or three old men of fashion like himself; "Yes, it is a pastel by Latour. It represents an old and dear friend of mine; she is no longer young, for, as well as I can recollect, she was in 1784, the date when I knew her, my elder by five or six years. We have not seen each other again since 1802, which fact in no way prevents our writing to each other every week, and receiving each other's periodical letters with corresponding pleasure. Yes, you are right, the pastel is indeed charming; but the original was very much more charming still."

As he pronounced the words, a ray of youth, soft as a sunbeam, would pass over the glowing face of the old man, who looked for the moment forty years younger.

Very often, when this had happened, Françoise found no need to bring any pretended message, for if the visitor were a man of tact and good feeling, he would take his departure in a few moments and leave Monsieur de Villenave alone to the reverie which the sight of Latour's beautiful pastel had awakened in the old man's breast. 



OW how had Monsieur de Villenave got this fine library of books? How had he formed this collection of autographs, unique in the world of collectors?

The answer is by the labour of his whole life.

To begin with, Monsieur de Villenave had never burnt a paper or torn up a letter. Invitations to the meetings of learned societies, to weddings and funerals, he had kept them all, and had classified them and assigned a place to each. He had a collection of every conceivable thing,—even including volumes which on the 14th July had been rescued half consumed from the bonfire that was devouring them in the great Court of the Bastille.

Two autograph hunters were kept continually employed by Monsieur de Villenave. One was a certain M. Fontaine, whom I knew personally, and who was himself author of a book entitled the Mannel des Aiitographcs; the other was a clerk in the War Office. All the grocers in Paris knew these two indefatigable searchers, and put on one side for their examination all the odds and ends of paper they bought. Amongst these they used to make a selection for which they paid at the rate of fifteen sous the pound, and which Monsieur de Villenave purchased from them for thirty sous.

Sometimes, too, Monsieur de Villenave went his rounds in person. There was not a grocer in Paris but knew him, who did not, when he saw him, bring together for his learned investigation the materials for his future paper bags.

Needless to add that the days Monsieur de Villenave devoted to autograph hunting, were given likewise to book hunting. He would follow the line of the quays, the most indefatigable of bibliophiles, and then, his two hands in his breeches pockets, his tall body bent, his fine, intelligent face lit up with desire, he would plunge his ardent gaze to the deepest depths of the show-cases. There he would search for the hidden treasure, and after fingering it a while, if the book were indeed what he had been coveting, if the edition were really the one he was in search of, would carry it off in triumph. So it went to swell Monsieur de Villenave's library, the reader opines? Not at all. In Monsieur de Villenave's library there was no room left, and had not been for years,—unless exchanges against autographs or prints made such room for the time being. No, the book found its home in the garret, which was divided into three compartments,—that of the octavos, that of the quartos, that of the folios between the other two.

This was the chaos out of which one day Monsieur de Villenave was to construct a new world,—a new continent like Australia or New Zealand. Meantime