Each window had its occupant posted against the glass, vainly endeavouring to catch one bit of blue amid the dreary waste of cloud. A little group, sulky and silent, were gathered around the weather-glass; a literary inquirer sat down to con over the predictions of the almanac. You might as well have looked for sociability among the inhabitants of a private madhouse as here. The weather was cursed in every language from Cherokee to Sanskrit; all agreed that no country had such an abominable climate. The Yankee praised the summers of America, the Dane upheld his own, and I took a patriotic turn, and vowed I had never seen such rain in Ireland. The master of the house could scarcely show himself amid this torrent of abusive criticism; and when he did by chance appear, he looked as much ashamed as though he himself had pulled out the spigot, and deluged the whole land with water. Meanwhile, none of those I looked for appeared. Neither the colonel’s daughter nor the baronne came down; the abbé too, did not descend to the breakfast room, and I was considerably puzzled and put out by the disappointment. After then enduring a good hour’s boredom from the old colonel on the subject of my late lamented parent, Mark O’Leary; after submitting to a severe cross-examination from the Yankee gentleman as to the reason of my coming abroad, what property and expectations I had, my age and birthplace, what my mother died of, and whether I did not feel very miserable from the abject slavery of submitting to an English Government--I escaped into the library, a fine, comfortable old room, which I rightly conjectured I should find unoccupied. Selecting a quaint-looking quarto with some curious illuminated pages for my companion, I drew a great deep leather chair into a recess of one window, and hugged myself in my solitude. While I listlessly turned over the leaves of my book, or sat lost in reflection, time crept along, and I heard the great clock of the château strike three; at the same moment a hand fell lightly on my shoulder; I turned about--it was the abbé. ‘I half suspected I should find you here,’ said he. ‘Do I disturb you, or may I keep you company?’ ‘But too happy,’ I replied, ‘if you ‘ll do me the favour.’ ‘I thought,’ said he, as he drew a chair opposite to me,--‘I thought you’d scarcely play dominoes all day, or discuss waistcoats.’ ‘In truth I was scarcely better employed; this old volume here which I took down for its plates----’ ‘_Ma foi_, a most interesting one; it is Guchardi’s _History of Mary of Burgundy_. Those quaint old processions, those venerable councils, are admirably depicted. What rich stores for a romance writer lie in the details of these old books! Their accuracy as to costume, the little traits of everyday life, are so naïvely told; every little domestic incident is so full of its characteristic era. I wonder, when the springs are so accessible, men do not draw more frequently from them, and more purely also.’