He went upstairs, while she bustled off to get him the best dinner she could improvise. The apartments he lived in were on the second storey--a bedroom, a bathroom, and a study. They were small, but full of all that taste and luxury could devise and affection and industry preserve. A broad writing-table occupied the place of honour. It was arranged so that the light fell conveniently to the hand and head. A large bronze inkstand formed the centrepiece, with a voluminous blotting-book of simple manufacture spread open before it. The rest of the table was occupied by papers on files. The floor, in spite of the ample waste-paper basket, was littered with scraps. It was the writing-table of a public man. The room was lit by electric light in portable shaded lamps. The walls were covered with shelves, filled with well-used volumes. To that Pantheon of Literature none were admitted till they had been read and valued. It was a various library: the philosophy of Schopenhauer divided Kant from Hegel, who jostled the Memoirs of St. Simon and the latest French novel; RASSELAS and LA CURÉE lay side by side; eight substantial volumes of Gibbon's famous History were not perhaps inappropriately prolonged by a fine edition of the DECAMERON; the ORIGIN OF SPECIES rested by the side of a black-letter Bible; THE REPUBLIC maintained an equilibrium with VANITY FAIR and the HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS. A volume of Macaulay's Essays lay on the writing-table itself; it was open, and that sublime passage whereby the genius of one man has immortalised the genius of another was marked in pencil. _And history, while for the warning of vehement, high, and daring natures, she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce that among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid name_. A half-empty box of cigarettes stood on a small table near a low leathern armchair, and by its side lay a heavy army-revolver, against the barrel of which the ashes of many cigarettes had been removed. In the corner of the room stood a small but exquisite Capitoline Venus, the cold chastity of its colour reproaching the allurements of its form. It was the chamber of a philosopher, but of no frigid, academic recluse; it was the chamber of a man, a human man, who appreciated all earthly pleasures, appraised them at their proper worth, enjoyed, and despised them.