associations with splendour and magnificence vanished; they conveyed to the mind no feeling but that of squalidness and wretchedness. Amidst all this I entered the house. There things looked even worse. The winds of heaven had freely coursed through the paneless windows, the rain had inundated the floors, decay had already commenced, and the place looked as if it had been years deserted. Chilly, comfortless, and wretched, the floors still covered with fragments of glass, which, crunching under one’s feet, added not a little to the misery of the scene, still further enhanced by a most gloomy evening, and the dismal sound of the wind through the branches foretelling a stormy night. At length, after wandering from room to room, always finding one worse than the last, the approaching darkness obliged me to decide quickly, so I pitched upon a large one, with a recess for a bed, where I could at least be at some distance from the windows. My men had already made themselves tolerably comfortable in the stable, and I now summoned all hands to make me so too. Brooms were speedily made by stripping the branches from some acacias or laburnums in the courtyard, and all the rubbish and broken glass swept out of the window; candles were procured from the mess, my bed made in the recess upon a bedstead, nearly sound--the place began to look a little better, and I a little more cheerful. Though not so luxuriously, yet I slept as soundly as ever at Colombes, _malgré_ the forlorn feeling that crept over me as I fell into unconsciousness at the idea of being the only person in the great rambling mansion, with doors and windows all open, and admittance free to whomsoever might come.