As we have already observed, nothing can be more wild and neglected than the present exterior of this palace, although the curious are still admitted to view those vast apartments so appropriate to the princely grandeur of past ages. Still it is not without a feeling of mournful regret that one of the present day can contemplate these magnificent remains of ancient splendour, whose halls were once peopled with a gay phalanx of pages, guards, squires, knights, and gentlemen, with the innumerable train of satellites for ever revolving round those illustrious houses, whose leaders reflected so much glory and splendour on that period of French history. And to the meditative mind there is a fund of painful reflection in thus witnessing the triumph of time over the impotent designs of men, who, firm in their own possessions, believed they bequeathed them with equal certainty to their descendants. Happily (thanks to the solitude of the desert spot in which it stood), the edifice of which we are speaking still retained a portion of its romantic and poetical character, and, when half veiled by the clouds of night, it shone forth in solemn majesty,--seemed to frown an awful lesson of monumental wisdom. Night, solitude, and silence, change not with time; contemporaries of all ages, they are immutable and fixed as eternity itself. Thus, when the ravages of time are hid by the mists of night, and the massive building stands out in bold relief, the spectator beholding it at midnight, in silence and solitude, might believe nought had changed within or without, and the long lapse of years between the past and present be effaced from his recollection. We shall conduct the reader to the Hôtel Lambert, about the time when M. de Brévannes quitted the opera. Thick grey clouds, driven hurriedly along by the sharp north wind, floated rapidly across the face of the heavens; and, as the moon sunk in the horizon, she covered the fantastic edges of the broken clouds with a bright silvery glow, whilst, above, numerous bright stars glittered and sparkled in the dark azure of the firmament. The irregular mass of the old palace with its gable ends, high chimneys with their whimsical supporters, and its immense façade, stood out in bold relief against the clear transparency of the midnight sky, while an alley of evergreen pines raised their pointed and sombre-looking heads above the garden-walls that bordered the Quai. The waters of the Seine, swollen by the rains of winter, dashed heavily on the shore, and by their mournful murmurs seemed replying to the prolonged whistling of the northerly breeze. Save the rush of troubled waters, and the loud swelling wind, all was silent in this part of Paris. Half-past four o'clock had just sounded from the distant arsenal clock, when a carriage stopped before the garden-wall.