His attention being now directed to the neglected state of the Indian Records, and the necessity for some plan for conserving them and rendering them {71} available for historical research, he resolved to examine this Department in Paris with his own eyes. 'Went to the Archives,' says his diary of the 14th November, 'and was received by the Director, who showed us all through the rooms. They are in magnificent order, and are situated in the old Hotel Soubise, with a museum of curious letters and documents for the amusement of the public, divided into the different epochs of the Ancient Kings, the Middle Ages, the Republic, the Empire, and the Monarchy after the peace. The republican documents are kept in _cartons_ which now number upwards of sixty thousand. The arrangement is simple, and access easy. There is a reading-room for the public down-stairs, but small, and the facilities given do not appear to be very great. It is within the power of the Director to refuse access to any document, if he sees fit. There is an enormous safe for the most valuable documents, such as Napoleon's Will, and the last letters of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; also a secret drawer containing letters of some of the kings of France, which are not allowed to be seen by any one. There does not seem to be any calendaring going on for the purposes of publication, beyond facsimiles of curious documents.' The feeling of rest, which is the unspeakable charm of the Indian voyage to a busy man, soon descended on Lord Mayo. He found every hotel good, and his whole route beautiful, as the fragmentary entries in his diary attest. On his railway journey through {72} France he stopped at St. Michel to see an eminent engineer who had Indian experience of a valuable kind. With the help of a special train, he carefully examined the works for the Mont Cenis tunnel then in progress. Her Majesty's ship _Psyche_ conveyed the Viceroy-elect and his suite from Brindisi to Alexandria, with a pleasant break in the harbour of Argostali in Cephalonia, which he describes in his diary as 'very pretty, land-locked on all sides, and large enough to hold the whole English fleet.'