“Yes, it's a real paradise, and in a garden that would beat Adam's now,” exclaimed Traynor; “for there's marble fountains, and statues, and temples, and grottos in it; and it's as big as a prairie, and as wild as a wilderness. And, better than all, there's a little pathway leads to a private stair that goes up into the library of the palace,--a spot nobody ever enters, and where you may study the whole day long without hearin' a footstep. All the books is there that ever was written, and manuscripts without end besides; and the Minister says I'm to have my own kay, and go in and out whenever I plaze. 'And if there's anything wantin',' says be, 'just order it on a slip of paper and send it to me, and you 'll have it at once.' When I asked if I ought to spake to the librarian himself, he only laughed, and said, 'That's me; but I'm never there. Take my word for it, Doctor, you 'll have the place to yourself.'” He spoke truly. Billy Traynor had it, indeed, to himself. There, the gray dawn of morning, and the last shadows of evening, ever found him, seated in one of those deep, cell-like recesses of the windows; the table, the seats, the very floor littered with volumes which, revelling in the luxury of wealth, he had accumulated around him. His greedy avidity for knowledge knew no bounds. The miser's thirst for gold was weak in comparison with that intense craving that seized upon him. Historians, critics, satirists, poets, dramatists, metaphysicians, never came amiss to a mind bent on acquiring. The life he led was like the realization of a glorious dream,--the calm repose, the perfect stillness of the spot, the boundless stores that lay about him; the growing sense of power, as day by day his intellect expanded; new vistas opened themselves before him, and new and unproved sources of pleasure sprang up in his nature. The never-ending variety gave a zest, too, to his labors that averted all weariness; and at last he divided his time ingeniously, alternating grave and difficult subjects with lighter topics,--making, as he said himself, “Aristophanes digest Plato.”