On Wednesday, the state and the library are expected to call a truce after agreeing to share custody of the 223-year-old document for the next century, at which point the agreement must be renegotiated or extended.
Together the Gillet collection forms what the French call a cabinet neither a library nor even a portion of a library, but a refined personal selection of souvenirs and rarities, that in Mr Gillet's case was first inherited and then enhanced over more than half a century.