When the procession had passed, I found it was expected that we should await its return, which I was well pleased to do. My young friend Dona Carlota improves on acquaintance; and as I begin to venture to speak Portuguese, I am becoming intimate with the elder part of the family. I was taken into the study, and for the first time saw a Brazilian private gentleman's library. As he is a judge, of course the greater part is law; but there are history and general literature, chiefly French, and some English books. I was introduced to several Portuguese authors; and Don Carlota, who reads remarkably well, did me the favour to read some of Diniz's fine verses to me, and to lend me his works. We then returned to our station at the window, and saw the procession return in the order in which it came, when our pleasant party dispersed. Yesterday, the assembly having finished its preliminary sittings, sent a deputation, headed by Jose Bonifacio, to His Imperial Majesty, to entreat that he would honour the assembly with his presence at their first sitting as a legislative body, and he was pleased to name half past eleven o'clock to-day for that purpose.[105] [Note 105: Various ordinances of the 3d and 19th June and the 3d of August, 1822, and of the 20th and 22d February, 1823, had been published for the assembling or regulating the election of deputies from the provinces of Brazil, to form a constituent assembly. Early in April, 1823, the greater number of those who could be collected in the present state of the country had arrived in the capital. On the 14th of that month, the Emperor fixed their first meeting for the 17th. Accordingly on the 17th of April, 1823, the deputies, in number 52, entered their house of assembly at nine o'clock in the morning, and proceeded to elect a temporary president and secretary, when the Right Reverend Don Jose Caetano da Silva Coutinho, bishop and grand chaplain, was elected president, and Manoel Jose de Sousa França secretary. The first act was to name two committees; one of five members, to hold a scrutiny on the election of the deputies generally; and the other of three, to examine those of the five. This necessary business, and some consequent discussion, occupied the whole of the first and greater part of the second session; towards the end of the latter, the form of the oath to be administered to the members, was decided:--