While thus digressing, I have forgotten to mention that people are running back and forward with bedroom candles; there is a confused hum of _bonsoir_ on every side; and, with many a hope of a fine day for the morrow, we separate for the night. I lay awake some hours thinking of Laura, and then of the baronne--they were both arch ones; the abbé too crossed my thoughts, and once or twice the old colonel’s roguish leer; but I slept soundly for all that, and did not wake till eight o’clock the next morning. The silence of the house struck me forcibly as I rubbed my eyes and looked about. Hang it, thought I, have they gone off to the _chasse_ without me? I surely could never have slept through the uproar of their trumpets. I drew aside the window-curtains, and the mystery was solved: such rain never fell before; the clouds, actually touching the tops of the beech-trees, seemed to ooze and squash like squeezed sponges. The torrent came down in that splashing stroke as if some force behind momentarily propelled it stronger; and the long-parched ground seethed and smoked like a heated caldron. Pleasant this, was reflection number one, as I endeavoured to peer through the mist, and beheld a haze of weeping foliage--pleasant to be immured here during Heaven knows how many days, without the power to escape. Lucky fellow, Arthur, was my second thought; capital quarters you have fallen into. Better far the snug comforts of a Flemish chateau than the chances of a wayside inn. Besides, here is a goodly company met together; there will needs be pleasant people among them. I wish it may rain these three weeks; château life is the very thing I ‘m curious about. How do they get through the day? There’s no _Times_ in Flanders; no one cares a farthing about who’s in and who’s out. There’s no Derby, no trials for murder. What can they do? was the question I put to myself a dozen times over. No matter; I have abundant occupation; my journal has never been posted up since--since--alas, I can scarcely tell! It might be from reflections like these, or perhaps because I was less of a sportsman than my companions, but certainly, whatever the cause, I bore up against the disappointment of the weather with far more philosophy than they, and dispersed a sack of proverbs about patience, hope, equanimity, and contentment which Sancho Panza himself might have envied, until at length no one ventured a malediction on the day in my presence, for fear of eliciting a hailstorm of moral reflections. The company dropped down to breakfast by detachments, the elated looks and flashing eyes of the night before saddened and overcast at the unexpected change. Even the elders of the party seemed discontented; and except myself and an old gentleman with the gout, who took an airing about the hall and the drawing-room in a wheel-chair, all seemed miserable.