hares of their
two co-legatees, and the library was saved. Rene 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, Gaetan 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
Encylopaedists, the whole world of philosophy and science. Therefore it
was that Cardinal Merlin, when he deigned to visit it,