WHEREIN USEFUL INFORMATION WILL BE FOUND CONCERNING A
LIBRARY WHERE STRANGE THINGS WILL SHORTLY COME TO PASS
Desirous of embracing the whole circle of human knowledge, and anxious
to bequeath to the world a concrete symbol of his encyclopædic genius
and a display in keeping with his pecuniary resources, Baron Alexandre
d'Esparvieu had formed a library of three hundred and sixty thousand
volumes, both printed and in manuscript, whereof the greater part
emanated from the Benedictines of Ligugé.
By a special clause in his will he enjoined his heirs to add to his
library, after his death, whatever they might deem worthy of note in
natural, moral, political, philosophical, and religious science.
He had indicated the sums which might be drawn from his estate for the
fulfilment of this object, and charged his eldest son, Fulgence-Adolphe,
to proceed with these additions. Fulgence-Adolphe accomplished with
filial respect the wishes expressed by his illustrious father.
After him, this huge library, which represented more than one child's
share of the estate, remained undivided between the Senator's three sons
and two daughters; and René d'Esparvieu, on whom devolved the house in
the Rue Garancière, became the guardian of the valuable collection. His
two sisters, Madame Paulet de Saint-Fain and Madame Cuissart, repeatedly
demanded that such a large but unremunerative piece of property should
be turned into money. But René and Gaétan bought in the shares of their
two co-legatees, and the library was saved. René d'Esparvieu even busied
himself in adding to it, thus fulfilling the intentions of its founder.
But from year to year he lessened the number and importance of the
acquisitions, opining that the intellectual output in Europe was on the
wane.
Nevertheless, Gaétan enriched it, out of his funds, with works published
both in France and abroad which he thought good, and he was not lacking
in judgment, though his brothers would never allow that he had a
particle. Thanks to this man of leisurely and inquiring mind, Baron
Alexandre's collection was kept practically up to date. Even at the
present day the d'Esparvieu library, in the departments of theology,
jurisprudence, and history is one of the finest private libraries in all
Europe. Here you may study physical science, or to put it better,
physical sciences in all their branches, and for that matter metaphysic
or metaphysics, that is to say, all that is connected with physics and
has no other name, so impossible is it to designate by a substantive
that which has no substance, and is but a dream and an illusion. Here
you may contemplate with admiration philosophers addressing themselves
to the solution, dissolution, and resolution of the Absolute, to the
determination of the Indeterminate and to the definition of the
Infinite.
Amid this pile of books and booklets, both sacred and profane, you may
find everything down to the latest and most fashionable pragmatism.
Other libraries there are, more richly abounding in bindings of
venerable antiquity and illustrious origin, whose smooth and soft-hued
texture render them delicious to the touch; bindings which the gilder's
art has enriched with gossamer, lace-work, foliage, flowers, emblematic
devices, and coats of arms; bindings that charm the studious eye with
their tender radiance. Other libraries perhaps harbour a greater array
of manuscripts illuminated with delicate and brilliant miniatures by
artists of Venice, Flanders, or Touraine. But in handsome, sound
editions of ancient and modern writers, both sacred and profane, the
d'Esparvieu library is second to none. Here one finds all that has come
down to us from antiquity; all the Fathers of the Church, the Apologists
and the Decretalists, all the Humanists of the Renaissance, all the
Encylopædists, the whole world of philosophy and science. Therefore it
was that Cardinal Merlin, when he deigned to visit it, remarked:
"There is no man whose brain is equal to containing all the knowledge
which is piled upon these shelves. Happily it doesn't matter."
Monseigneur Cachepot, who worked there often when a curate in Paris, was
in the habit of saying:
"I see here the stuff to make many a Thomas Aquinas and many an Arius,
if only the modern mind had not lost its ancient ardour for good and
evil."
There was no gainsaying that the manuscripts formed the more valuable
portion of this immense collection. Noteworthy indeed was the
unpublished correspondence of Gassendi, of Father Mersenne, and of
Pascal, which threw a new light on the spirit of the seventeenth
century. Nor must we forget the Hebrew Bibles, the Talmuds, the
Rabbinical treatises, printed and in manuscript, the Aramaic and
Samaritan texts, on sheepskin and on tablets of sycamore; in fine, all
these antique and valuable copies collected in Egypt and in Syria by the
celebrated Moïse de Dina, and acquired at a small cost by Alexandre
d'Esparvieu in 1836, when the learned Hebraist died of old age and
poverty in Paris.
The Esparvienne library occupied the whole of the second floor of the
old house. The works thought to be of but mediocre interest, such as
books of Protestant exegesis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the gift of Monsieur Gaétan, were relegated unbound to the limbo of the
upper regions. The catalogue, with its various supplements, ran into no
less than eighteen folio volumes. It was quite up to date, and the
library was in perfect order. Monsieur Julien Sariette, archivist and
palæographer, who, being poor and retiring, used to make his living by
teaching, became, in 1895, tutor to young Maurice on the recommendation
of the Bishop of Agra, and with scarcely an interval found himself
curator of the Bibliothèque Esparvienne. Endowed with business-like
energy and dogged patience, Monsieur Sariette himself classified all the
members of this vast body. The system he invented and put into practice
was so complicated, the labels he put on the books were made up of so
many capital letters and small letters, both Latin and Greek, so many
Arabic and Roman numerals, asterisks, double asterisks, triple
asterisks, and those signs which in arithmetic express powers and roots,
that the mere study of it would have involved more time and labour than
would have been required for the complete mastery of algebra, and as no
one could be found who would give the hours, that might be more
profitably employed in discovering the law of numbers, to the solving
of these cryptic symbols, Monsieur Sariette remained the only one
capable of finding his way among the intricacies of his system, and
without his help it had become an utter impossibility to discover, among
the three hundred and sixty thousand volumes confided to his care, the
particular volume one happened to require. Such was the result of his
labours. Far from complaining about it, he experienced on the contrary a
lively satisfaction.
Monsieur Sariette loved his library. He loved it with a jealous love. He
was there every day at seven o'clock in the morning busy cataloguing at
a huge mahogany desk. The slips in his handwriting filled an enormous
case standing by his side surmounted by a plaster bust of Alexandre
d'Esparvieu. Alexandre wore his hair brushed straight back, and had a
sublime look on his face. Like Chateaubriand, he affected little
feathery side whiskers. His lips were pursed, his bosom bare. Punctually
at midday Monsieur Sariette used to sally forth to lunch at a _crèmerie_
in the narrow gloomy Rue des Canettes. It was known as the _Crèmerie des
Quatre Évêques_, and had once been the haunt of Baudelaire, Theodore de
Banville, Charles Asselineau, and a certain grandee of Spain who had
translated the "Mysteries of Paris" into the language of the
_conquistadores_. And the ducks that paddled so nicely on the old stone
sign which gave its name to the street used to recognize Monsieur
Sariette. At a quarter to one, to the very minute, he went back to his
library, where he remained until seven o'clock. He then again betook
himself to the _Quatre Évêques_, and sat down to his frugal dinner, with
its crowning glory of stewed prunes. Every evening, after dinner, his
crony, Monsieur Guinardon, universally known as Père Guinardon, a
scene-painter and picture-restorer, who used to do work for churches,
would come from his garret in the Rue Princesse to have his coffee and
liqueur at the _Quatre Évêques_, and the two friends would play their
game of dominoes.
Old Guinardon, who was like some rugged old tree still full of sap, was
older than he could bring himself to believe. He had known Chenavard.
His chastity was positively ferocious, and he was for ever denouncing
the impurities of neo-paganism in language of alarming obscenity. He
loved talking. Monsieur Sariette was a ready listener. Old Guinardon's
favourite subject was the Chapelle des Anges in St. Sulpice, in which
the paintings were peeling off the walls, and which he was one day to
restore; when, that is, it should please God, for, since the Separation,
the churches belonged solely to God, and no one would undertake the
responsibility of even the most urgent repairs. But old Guinardon
demanded no salary.
"Michael is my patron saint," he said. "And I have a special devotion
for the Holy Angels."
After they had had their game of dominoes, Monsieur Sariette, very thin
and small, and old Guinardon, sturdy as an oak, hirsute as a lion, and
tall as a Saint Christopher, went off chatting away side by side across
the Place Saint Sulpice, heedless of whether the night were fine or
stormy. Monsieur Sariette always went straight home, much to the regret
of the painter, who was a gossip and a nightbird.
The following day, as the clock struck seven, Monsieur Sariette would
take up his place in the library, and resume his cataloguing. As he sat
at his desk, however, he would dart a Medusa-like look at anyone who
entered, fearing lest he should prove to be a book-borrower. It was not
merely the magistrates, politicians, and prelates whom he would have
liked to turn to stone when they came to ask for the loan of a book with
an air of authority bred of their familiarity with the master of the
house. He would have done as much to Monsieur Gaétan, the library's
benefactor, when he wanted some gay or scandalous old volume wherewith
to beguile a wet day in the country. He would have meted out similar
treatment to Madame René d'Esparvieu, when she came to look for a book
to read to her sick poor in hospital, and even to Monsieur René
d'Esparvieu himself, who generally contented himself with the Civil Code
and a volume of Dalloz. The borrowing of the smallest book seemed like
dragging his heart out. To refuse a volume even to such as had the most
incontestable right to it, Monsieur Sariette would invent countless
far-fetched or clumsy fibs, and did not even shrink from slandering
himself as curator or from casting doubts on his own vigilance by saying
that such and such a book was mislaid or lost, when a moment ago he had
been gloating over that very volume or pressing it to his bosom. And
when ultimately forced to part with a volume he would take it back a
score of times from the borrower before he finally relinquished it.
He was always in agony lest one of the objects confided to his care
should escape him. As the guardian of three hundred and sixty thousand
volumes, he had three hundred and sixty thousand reasons for alarm.
Sometimes he woke at night bathed in sweat, and uttering a cry of fear,
because he had dreamed he had seen a gap on one of the shelves of his
bookcases. It seemed to him a monstrous, unheard-of, and most grievous
thing that a volume should leave its habitat. This noble rapacity
exasperated Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, who, failing to understand the
good qualities of his paragon of a librarian, called him an old maniac.
Monsieur Sariette knew nought of this injustice, but he would have
braved the cruellest misfortune and endured opprobrium and insult to
safeguard the integrity of his trust. Thanks to his assiduity, his
vigilance and zeal, or, in a word, to his love, the Esparvienne library
had not lost so much as a single leaflet under his supervision during
the sixteen years which had now rolled by, this ninth of September,
1912.