News from France/Chapter 3
SURRENDER
OF THE LIBRARY OF
CARDINAL MAZARIN
The following was translated by Miss Victoria Richmond, of the Newark Free Public Library, and Mr. John Cotton Dana, from Histoire de la Bibliothèque Mazarine par Alfred Franklin. Deuxième édition. Paris, 1901. This is the first publication of an English translation.
SURRENDER OF THE LIBRARY
OF
CARDINAL MAZARIN
We reproduce, in its entirety, this curious document, a copy of which it is now almost impossible to find. The original is a quarto of four pages and bears no title. The title which we give it is taken from the catalogue of all the works of Gabriel Naudé, published by L. Jacob at the end of the Tumulus Naudaei.
TO-DAY, February 14th, 1651, a certain Mathieu, attendant in waiting at the palace of Monsignor the Most Eminent Cardinal Mazarin, came to my lodgings in the court of the Abbey of St. Geneviève to inform me that Monsieur Tubeuf, president of the Chamber of Accounts, had asked for me on the evening of the preceding day, and had given orders that I be told to go to him as early in the morning as possible.
I went, accordingly, at eight o'clock, to the house of the said Sieur Tubeuf, at the rear of the Palais-Royal, near the knoll of St. Roch. Having learned from the porter that the said Sieur had not yet risen, I proceeded to the palace of Monsignor the Cardinal, my master, where a man named Annet, attendant of the wardrobe, told me that Monsieur Tubeuf had taken possession of the palace and of all that was contained therein as security for the sum of six hundred and eighty thousand livres which was owed him by His Eminence, and that he had sent for me to get for him the keys of the library. This obliged me to go to the Palais-Royal in order to learn from Monsieur Euzenat, steward of the house of the said Seigneur [Mazarin], what I must do under the circumstances. The said Sieur Euzenat told me that Monsieur Tubeuf had come on the previous day to speak with him in his room in the Palais-Royal, and had begged him to approve of the above-mentioned seizure, that the money due him might be assured to him.
Sieur Euzenat replied to this, so he told me, that he well knew that His Eminence would never allow anyone to suffer any loss, and him (Tubeuf), even less than any other; and that he could proceed in the affair in whatever manner seemed to him most helpful or needful for his security. Sieur Tubeuf then begged him to come and make formal acknowledgement of the seizure of the property at the palace of His Eminence. But Sieur Euzenat excused himself on the plea that he had business with Monsieur de Massac, who was present, which would make it impossible for him to go; adding, however, that he would send Monsieur le Normand, to whom the property could be delivered. He told me also that he was all the more willing to consent to the seizure, as it might be the means of protecting the palace and the little that still remained in it from the fury and violence of the people, if, by chance, they were inclined to make any disturbance in case the King left Paris, or for any other reasons which it would be difficult either to foresee or to avoid. Moreover, he said, he could not see how I could object to having the library treated like the rest of the palace, since, in any case, the said Sieur Tubeuf was legally entitled to attach it. Also, he added that, as he (Tubeuf) was a good friend of our master, it was wiser to deal with him civilly than with any rudeness or show of force.
After this I returned to the Mazarin palace and found there Monsieur Tubeuf, who was accompanied by an attorney named Blanc, a bailiff named Barbault, who was making an inventory of everything in the palace that belonged to His Eminence, and by Monsieur Petit, an old servant of Sieur Tubeuf, who carefully locked each room after it had been visited, and retained the keys. He told me, as soon as we met, that he sent for me to get from me the keys of the library, since he had taken possession of the palace and everything it contained. I replied, that I would give them to him more willingly than to any other man in the world, in view of the good friendship he had always shown toward Monsignor the Cardinal; that the latter would favourably remember him, in case it pleased God to recall him to Paris; that if he did not return, I believed, nevertheless, that friendly relations would always exist between them; and that I was sure that he, Monsieur Tubeuf, would do nothing in this affair that would in any way displease him.
I then led him to the large hall where the small wing joins the main building, opened it for him, and, after having shown him that it was full from top to bottom with books on civil law and philosophy in folio, and of books of theology in quarto, I closed the door and locked it fast with a double turn, and delivered the key, by order of the said Sieur Tubeuf, to the said Sieur Petit.
From there I led him to the first mezzanine floor of the three large rooms which are on a level with the wardrobe, and, after having called his attention to the fact that it was entirely filled with books on medicine, chemistry, and natural history, in volumes of all sizes, showing him also that many were piled on the floor for lack of room on the shelves, I closed the door and locked it fast with a double turn, and gave the key to the said Sieur Petit.
Then I took the said Sieur Tubeuf to the second mezzanine floor, full of Bibles in all languages; to wit, Greek, Hebrew, and other Oriental tongues, Latin,—in old and recent editions,—French, Italian, Spanish, German, Flemish, English, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, Finnish, Welsh, Hibernian, and Rutenian, together with other manuscripts to the number of about two hundred, and commentaries on the Bible in volumes of all sizes; and having closed and locked that room fast with a double turn, I gave the key to the gentleman already named.
Then I showed him the third mezzanine floor, full of books in manuscript, Hebrew, Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopian, Arabic, Greek, Spanish, Provençal, Italian, and Latin as varied in their subjects as they were in their forms. And having locked it fast and delivered the key as before, I led him up to the main library, and opened for him the first room, which is very high and filled from floor to ceiling with books on canon law, politics, and other miscellaneous subjects.
Passing from this first room to the second, I showed him that it was full, like the first, of Lutheran, Calvinistic, Socinian, and other heretical books in all languages, with many Hebrew, Syriac, Arabian, Ethiopian, and Oriental books of all sorts, and that here also many had been piled on the floor for lack of room on the shelves.
Finally I led him to the two rooms in the large gallery, each about fifty or sixty feet long, where was all the history, ecclesiastic and profane, universal and special, of every nation; the three hundred and fifty volumes of manuscripts in folio, bound in flesh-coloured morocco, collected by Monsieur de Loménie; books on mathematics to the number of about thirty-five hundred volumes; the Fathers, Scholastics, controversies, sermons, books of the Louvre press, and almost all of the humanities; together with more books piled on the floors than could be contained in three rooms of a like size, and many large volumes of charts, prints, travels, voyages, tariffs, etc.
Then I showed him how the door on the side toward the terrace was locked fast and firmly secured with bolts extending across it above and below. And then, having brought him out of the said gallery and the two rooms just mentioned, which are joined to the gallery by the door on the level with the wardrobe by which he entered, I closed and locked it fast with a double turn, and delivered the key to the said Sieur Petit, for the fifth and the last time.
And having implored the said Sieur Tubeuf to use the utmost care to prevent as far as possible the dissipation of this the most beautiful, the best and the largest library which had ever been brought together in the world, containing, to my own knowledge, more than forty thousand volumes, of which more than twelve thousand were in folio, I withdrew, with tears in my eyes at the thought that the public was on the eve of being deprived of so great a treasure, and that the noble intentions of His Eminence were being so ill repaid that, instead of raising monuments to him for the many victories gained and the many cities taken through his efforts; and for having so successfully administered the affairs of France in the many storms and tempests through which she had passed; and for having so faithfully served and so vigorously defended the authority of the King and his mother, in her quality of Regent, they talk now only of banishing him, of proscribing him, of stoning him, as though he were the sworn enemy of France.
They condemn him without any form of trial, they incite the lower classes to persecute him, they pursue his friends and servants as though they were enemies of the country, and they forget no insult they can offer to the best man in the world and the most faithful and the most devoted Minister of State France has ever had. God knows the cause of all these disorders, as well as of the factions which now embroil this kingdom, and when the enemies of the Cardinal have reached the height of their iniquities, He will know how to justify the innocent and punish the guilty.