ground—­but which he had parted with, for 100 francs, to the library of a Benedictin monastery—­now destroyed.  It had cost him twelve sous.”  “But see, Sir, (continued he) is not this curious?” “It is a mere reprint, (replied I) of what was first published three hundred years ago.”  “No matter—­buy it, and read it—­it will amuse you—­and it costs only five sous.”  I purchased two copies, and I send you here the title and the frontispiece. “Le Dragon Rouge, ou l’art de commander les Esprits Celestes, Aeriens, Terrestres, Infernaux.  Avec le vrai Secret de faire parler les Morts; de gagner toutes les fois qu’on met aux Lotteries; de decouvrir les Tresors,” &c.

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The bookseller told me that he regularly sold hundreds of copies of this work, and that the country people yet believed in the efficacy of its contents!  I had been told that it was in this very town that a copy of the Mazarine Bible had been picked up for some half dozen francs!—­and conveyed to the public library at Munich.

Towards the evening, I visited the public library by appointment.  Indeed I had casually met the public librarian at the first Bouquiniste’s:  and he fixed the hour of half-past six.  I was punctual almost to the minute; and on entering the library, found a sort of BODLEY in miniature:  except that there was a great mass of books in the middle of the room—­placed in a parallelogram form—­which I thought must have a prodigiously heavy pressure upon the floor.  I quickly began to look about for Editiones Principes; but, at starting, my guide placed before me two copies of the celebrated Liber Nanceidos:[200] of which one might be fairly said to be large paper.  On continuing my examination, I found civil and canon law—­ pandects, glosses, decretals, and commentaries—­out of number:  together with no small sprinkling of medical works.  Among the latter was a curious, and Mentelin-like looking, edition of Avicenna.  But Ludolphus’s Life of Christ, in Latin, printed in the smallest type of Eggesteyn, in 1474, a folio, was a volume really worth opening and worth coveting.  It was in its original monastic binding—­large, white, unsullied, and abounding with rough marginal edges.

It is supposed that the library contains 25,000 volumes.  Attached to it is a Museum of Natural History.  But alas! since the revolution it exhibits a frightful picture of decay, devastation, and confusion.  To my eye, it was little better than the apothecary’s shop described by Romeo.  It contained a number of portraits in oil, of eminent Naturalists; which are palpable copies, by the same hand, of originals ... that have probably perished.  The museum had been gutted of almost every thing that was curious or precious.  Indeed they want funds, both for the museum and the library.  It was near night-fall when I quitted the library, and walked with the librarian