The caprices of men, of Englishmen in particular, had long ceased to surprise me; each day disclosed some new eccentricity or other. In the very last hotel I had left there was a Member of Parliament planning a new route to the Rhine, avoiding Cologne, because in the coffee-room of the ‘Grossen Rheinberg’ there was a double door that everybody banged when he went in or out, and so discomposed the honourable and learned gentleman that he was laid up for three weeks with a fit of gout, brought on by pure passion at the inconvenience. I had not long to wait for the explanation in this case. My companion appeared to think he owed it to himself to ‘show cause’ why he was not to be accounted a lunatic; and after giving me briefly to understand that his means enabled him to retire from active pursuits and enjoy his ease, he went on to recount that he had come abroad to pass the remainder of his days in peace and tranquillity. But I shall let him tell his own story in his own words. ‘On the eighth day after my arrival at Brussels, I told my wife to pack up; for as Mr. Thysens the lawyer, who promised to write before that time, had not done so, we had nothing to wait for. We had seen Waterloo, visited the Musée, skated about in listed slippers through the Palais d’Orange, dined at Dubos’s, ate ice at Velloni’s, bought half the old lace in the Rue de la Madelaine, and almost caught an ague in the Allée Verte. This was certainly pleasure enough for one week; so I ordered my bill, and prepared “to evacuate Flanders.” Lord help us, what beings we are! Had I gone down to the railroad by the Boulevards and not by the Montagne de la Cour, what miseries might I not have been spared! Mr. Thysens’s clerk met me, just as I emerged from the Place Royale, with a letter in his hand. I took it, opened, and read:-- ‘“Sir,--I have just completed the purchase of the beautiful Château of Vanderstradentendonk, with all its gardens, orchards, pheasantries, piscinae, prairies, and forest rights, which are now your property. Accept my most respectful congratulations upon your acquisition of this magnificent seat of ancient grandeur, rendered doubly precious by its having been once the favourite residence and château of the great Van Dyck.” ‘Here followed a long encomium upon Rubens and his school, which I did not half relish, knowing it was charged to me in my account; the whole winding up with a pressing recommendation to hasten down at once to take possession, and enjoy the partridge shooting, then in great abundance.