This change of destination was not unpleasant to me, for all I now wanted was society and occupation; and, prevented as I had been, by my youth and my English birth, from entering into the debaucheries or factions of Paris, its routine had become wearisome to me even before I quitted it. All was now bustle in the château. As the autumn was coming on, fires were lighted in every apartment, and busy hands were engaged in removing the dust which, during the last two years, had accumulated in the untenanted rooms. My solitary residence of a month in the midst of such scenes as those around me had, I believe, done more to call forth whatever portion of imagination entered into the composition of John Marston Hall than all the events of his former life. Lord Masterton, as I had before said, had done a good deal, it is true; but even when I quitted him, my great thirst was for action, not for thought. Now a new ingredient seemed mingling with my nature: I began to view the things around me in a different light; and though I would fain have had some one to converse with, yet I could dream even alone. Thus, during the next two or three days, when the evening had closed in, and I was left in the old library by myself, after reading for an hour or two, I would rise, and without a candle, wander through all the dim vast halls and gloomy chambers of the Prés Vallée, watching the flickering light of the fires, kindled in each chamber to scare away the damp, as the flame flashed faintly from time to time upon the rich arras and dark hangings, and dreaming all the time of heaven knows what compound of scenes and adventures which those chambers might have witnessed in times past.