This splendid library remained intact for more than 200 years, and it was not until 1677 that it was sold almost as it stood to the Marquis de Ménars. At his death in 1718, it was purchased by Cardinal de Rohan, but in 1789, his heirs, impoverished by legal proceedings, were compelled to disperse the collection. The binders principally employed by De Thou were the Eves (Nicholas, Clovis, and Robert), whose splendid workmanship is a model for such of our modern binders as follow the higher branches of the art.
Le Gascon, the binder to the Duke of Orleans, who seems to have flourished between the years 1620 and 1640, was another workman of the first rank. The Duke was a great collector, whose shelves were covered with green velvet, garnished with gold lace and fringe, and whose bindings by Le Gascon were similarly ornamented.
Among the large number of French bibliophiles who now appeared on the scene, and competed with each other in the beauty of their bindings, one or two must necessarily be mentioned, since the modern collector envies or admires their taste.
Chancellor Séguier, at the end of the seventeenth century, employed Ruette to make the bindings _au mouton d'or_, which graced his shelves; and a little later still, the Baron de Longepierre utilised the well-known ornament of the Golden Fleece, which, when found on any book, no matter how intrinsically worthless, greatly enhances its price. These are the prizes of book collecting, seldom met with, and always strongly competed for.
The Colberts stamped the sides of their books with their crest, in which the climbing adder is always conspicuous. There were no less than seven members of this family who loved books, and all embellished them with the adder in a shield surmounted by a crown.
Nicholas (1680) and Charles Louis Fouquet (1684-1761) each adopted the coat of arms with a squirrel--looking for all the world like a lion--and the motto, "Quo non ascendam". Cardinal Mazarin, who died at Vincennes on the 9th of March, 1661, had many devices, the most common of which is the coat of arms, consisting of an axe bound up in a bundle of fasces, and surmounted by a cardinal's hat. These and many other figures which generations of bibliophiles have caused to be tooled on their books, point conclusively to what library any given specimen formerly belonged, though, as might be expected, it is sometimes a matter of great difficulty, or even impossibility, to identify particular volumes. Some amateurs discarded their own crests, and adopted others, for reasons which are not apparent, while women, as, for example, the Duchesse du Maine, who decorated her books at Sceaux with a golden bee-hive, appear to have possessed the most intricate armorial bearings, or to have been guided by mere caprice, in their choice of emblems. Many books bearing crests or coats of arms cannot, therefore, be identified, and for this reason, amongst others, the few books which have been written on this branch of the art of binding are necessarily incomplete. One of the best--which, moreover, contains some hundreds of woodcuts illustrative of various devices--is Guigard's _Armorial du Bibliophile_, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1870-3, but this is strictly confined to French devices. Even Hobson's choice, however, is often better than none.[13]