A POET'S LIBRARY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1910, Page 10

A POET'S LIBRARY.

STORY OF ROSTAND'S BOOKBINDER. M. Edmond Rostand has a bookbinder, and his bookbinder is a grammarian (writes the Paris correspondent of the St. James's Budget). Wherefore all Paris has been smiling. M. Rostand is fond of volumes richly bound', and the works in his library at Cambo must show not so much by their state of wear as by the splendour of their gilded backs and soft morocco coats how much their owner loves them. So, recently, when he left Paris, M. Rostand left with his bookbinder a large number of volumes to be bound, among them being one on to the back of which was to be printed: — CHOPIN BALLADES AND NOCTURNES. The bookbinder, though he is a grammarian, is no musician, but he had heard of Chopin. What shocked him was the title "Ballades and Nocturnes." "Ballades," he thought, is slang, and quite unworthy of a great musician. If M. Rostand liked to put slang words into his plays (the bookbinder has had free seats for "Chantecler") that was his business. But he should have no slang French on the book backs in his library for all the world to smile at. And when the books arrived at Cambo, and M. Rostand unpacked them with care, ne was a little bit surprised to read, graven in gold beneath the name of Chopin: — PROMENADES AND NOCTURNES. For "Ballades" Is Parisian slang for the Parisian's daily crawl along the boulevard, and the bookbinder thought that Chopin had set "Rambles by day and night" to music.