My visit to Oxford was over all too soon, and I returned to London to toil away at my Sanskrit MSS. in the little room that had been assigned to me in the Old East India House in Leadenhall Street. That building, too, in which the reins of the mighty Empire of India were held, mostly by the hands of merchants, has vanished, and the place of it knoweth it no more. However, I thought little of India, I only thought of the library at the East India House, a real Eldorado for an eager Sanskrit student, who had never seen such treasures before. I saw little else there, I only remember seeing Tippoo Sahib’s tiger which held an English soldier in his claws, and was regularly wound up for the benefit of visitors, and then uttered a loud squeak, enough to disturb even the most absorbed of students. I felt quite dazed by all the books and manuscripts placed at my disposal, and revelled in them every day till it became dark, and I had to walk home through Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, and the Strand, generally carrying ever so many books and papers under my arms. I knew nobody in the city, and no one knew me; and what did I care for the world, as long as I had my beloved manuscripts? In March, 1848, I had to go over to Paris to finish up some work there, and just came in for the revolution. From my windows I had a fine view of all that was going on. I well remember the pandemonium in the streets, the aspect of the savage mob, the wanton firing of shots at quiet spectators, the hoisting of Louis Philippe’s nankeen trousers on the flag-staff of the Tuileries. When bullets began to come through my windows, I thought it time to be off while it was still possible. Then came the question how to get my box full of precious manuscripts, &c., belonging to the East India Company, to the train. The only railway open was the line to Havre, which had been broken up close to the station, but further on was intact, and in order to get there we had to climb three barricades. I offered my _concierge_ five francs to carry my box, but his wife would not hear of his risking his life in the streets; ten francs—the same result; but at the sight of a louis d’or she changed her mind, and with an “Allez, mon ami, allez toujours,” dispatched her husband on his perilous expedition. Arrived in London I went straight to the Prussian Legation, and was the first to give Bunsen the news of Louis Philippe’s flight from Paris. Bunsen took me off to see Lord Palmerston, and I was able to show him a bullet that I had picked up in my room as evidence of the bloody scenes that had been enacted in Paris. So even a poor scholar had to play his small part in the events that go to make up history. CHAPTER VII EARLY DAYS AT OXFORD