At length one of these stealthy attendants desired me, in the name of his lord, to take some refreshment; and then, with a low reverence, quitted the cabinet, as if afraid that I should make him any answer. I could not help thinking, as they left me, what a system of terror must that be which could drill any two Frenchmen into silence like this! However, I approached the table, and indulged myself with a cup of most exquisite coffee; after which I examined the bookcase, and glancing my eye over histories and tragedies, and essays and treatises, I fixed at length upon Ovid, from a sort of instinctive feeling that the mind, when it wishes to fly from itself and the too sad realities of human existence, assimilates much more easily with anything imaginative than with anything true. I was still reading; and, though sometimes falling into long lapses of thought, I was nevertheless highly enjoying the beautiful fictions of the poet, when the door was again opened, and the minister re-appeared. I instantly laid down the book and rose; but, pointing to a chair, he bade me be seated, and taking up my book, turned over the pages for a few moments, while a servant brought him a cup of fresh coffee and a biscuit. "Are you fond of Ovid?" demanded he, at length; and then, without allowing me time to reply, he added, "He is my favourite author; I read him more than any other book." The tone which he took was that of easy, common conversation, which two persons, perfectly equal in every respect, might be supposed to hold upon any indifferent subject; and I, of course, answered in the same. "Ovid," I said, "is certainly one of my favourite poets, but I am afraid of reading him so often as I should wish; for there is an enervating tendency in all his writings, which I should fear would greatly relax the mind." "It is for that very reason that I read him," replied the minister. "It is alone when I wish for relaxation that I read, and then--after every thought having been in activity for a whole long day--Ovid is like a bed of roses to the mind, where it can repose itself, and recruit its powers of action for the business of another." This was certainly not the conversation which I expected, and I paused without making any reply, thinking that the minister would soon enter upon those important subjects on which I could give the best and latest information; but, on the contrary, he proceeded with Ovid.