opposite the engraved frontispiece, as follows:--

[Illustration: LE PASTISSIER FRANCOIS
Ou est enseigne la maniere de
faire toute sorte de Pastisserie,
tres-utile a toute sorte
de personnes.
_ENSEMBLE_
_Le moyen d'aprester toutes sortes d'oeufs_
_pour les jours maigres & autres,_
_en plus de soixante facons._
_A AMSTERDAM_
Chez Louys & Daniel Elzevier
_A M DC LV._]

But Nodier was far from being the gourmet that Dumas supposed him to be.
He was merely a bookhunter devouring a rare 'find'; and the little book,
he explained to Dumas, was one of those tiny volumes published in the
seventeenth century by the house of the Elzeviers at Leyden and
Amsterdam; and of all the many productions of that press, this was the
most sought for by collectors.

Elzeviers, however, are no longer fashionable, in this country at least.
The Caesar might possibly bring five pounds if it came to the notice of an
Elzevier specialist, but I doubt it.[12] Only the Pastissier has retained
its exalted price, probably on account of its notoriety. A copy, in
modern calf binding, sold recently (1917) at Sotheby's for so much as
L130; but Lord Vernon's copy, choicely bound by Cape, realised only L70
at the Sudbury sale in June 1918. However, it was a poor copy and much
cut down.

Railway-trains, among other things, have killed Elzeviers. Nothing could
be more convenient for saddle-bag or knapsack, or the restricted luggage
which one could stow in the boot of a coach. But who makes a practice
nowadays of putting books into his suit-case or gladstone-bag?[13]
Besides, before the advent of railways, there was not the same facility
for distributing books, and one might travel many leagues and visit many
villages without coming to a place where there would be a bookshop. In
travelling nowadays one is continually in the presence of cheap books.

The fate of the little Pastissier was probably that of many popular
books. There must have been thousands of copies of it printed. Dumas, in
that delightful chapter of 'Mes Memoires' which we have just quoted,
makes Nodier say, 'Techener declares that there were five thousand five
hundred copies issued, and I maintain that there were more than ten
thousand printed'; and he goes on to declare that 'there are probably
only ten examples of it left in Europe.' Willems, however, in his
bibliography of the Elzeviers published in 1880, enumerates some thirty
copies, and states that the highest price yet paid for t