Michael found himself very well off in his new quarters; and as nothing happened to explain the king's whim, he was confirmed in his belief that its only object was to make him more comfortable. He was very punctual in attending to all his duties, and inspected the garrison very frequently, but he spent a good many of his spare hours in reading and study. For the king liked men of learning and cultivation, and Michael was bent upon pleasing him in these matters if he could. Being in Buda, with a little time on his hands, gave him a capital opportunity of improving himself; for he had become acquainted with the king's great friend the librarian Galeotti, and through him he now made acquaintance with the famous library which Matthias was then forming under the direction of Galeotti and his fellow-worker Ugoletti. The library was in the castle, and consisted of two great halls, in which, by the end of his life, the king had collected above fifty thousand volumes. He was constantly buying up valuable manuscripts in Italy, Constantinople, and Asia; and he kept a number of men constantly employed in copying--four in Florence and thirty in Buda. The manuscripts were many of them beautifully illuminated and adorned with tasteful initials and pictures, and frequently with likenesses of the king and his wife, so that they were valuable as works of art. The art of printing, too, had been lately introduced, and the printing-press was kept constantly at work adding to the contents of the polished cedar-wood book-shelves, which were protected by silken, gold-embroidered curtains: for Matthias treated his books royally and as if he loved them. Besides books, the two halls contained three hundred statues, some ancient and some modern; and in the vestibule were astronomical and mathematical instruments, with a large celestial globe in the centre supported by two genii. Michael had abundant opportunities of study, and knew that he could not please the king better than by availing himself of them. The Italian which he had learned from the grooms at Visegrád he now found most useful, as it enabled him to talk to the various artists, sculptors, musicians, and other distinguished men from Italy, whom the king loved to have about him. The two librarians of course he knew well; then there was the great painter Filippo Lippi, and the Florentine architect Averulino, by whom the royal palaces both in Buda and Visegrád were beautified and enlarged. Carbo of Ferrara was writing a dialogue, in which he sang the praises of King Matthias; Galeotti was busy with a book of entertaining stories, full of anecdotes and sayings of the king, to which Michael certainly might have contributed much that was interesting; Bonfinius of Ascoli, reader to the queen, was engaged upon his History of Hungary; and various Hungarian authors were composing their chronicles and writing legends and poetry in Latin--that being still the language of the learned throughout Europe.