th whom your people have a little difference, and shares unbidden in
the free distribution of brides to-night. This promises to be
interesting; depend on it I will come; if you will keep me a place
where I can hear the speeches, and not forget me when the turtle soup
goes round, I shall be more than grateful. Now to another matter. I
want to get a few minutes with your President, Prince Hath. He
concentrates the fluid intelligence of this sphere, I am told. Where
can I find him?"

"He is drunk, in the library, sir!"

"My word! It is early in the day for that, and a singular conjunction
of place and circumstance."

"Where," said the girl, "could he safer be? We can always fetch him if
we want him, and sunk in blue oblivion he will not come to harm."

"A cheerful view, Miss, which is worthy of the attention of our
reformers. Nevertheless, I will go to him. I have known men tell more
truth in that state than in any other."

The servitor directed me to the library, and after desolate wanderings
up crumbling steps and down mouldering corridors, sunny and lovely in
decay, I came to the immense lumber-shed of knowledge they had told me
of, a city of dead books, a place of dusty cathedral aisles stored with
forgotten learning. At a table sat Hath the purposeless, enthroned in
leather and vellum, snoring in divine content amongst all that wasted
labour, and nothing I could do was sufficient to shake him into
semblance of intelligence. So perforce I turned away till he should
have come to himself, and wandering round the splendid litter of a
noble library, presently amongst the ruck of volumes on the floor,
amongst those lordly tomes in tattered green and gold, and ivory, my
eye lit upon a volume propped up curiously on end, and going to it
through the confusion I saw by the dried fruit rind upon the sticks
supporting it, that the grave and reverend tome was set to catch a
mouse! It was a splendid book when I looked more closely, bound as a
king might bind his choicest treasure, the sweet-scented leather on it
was no doubt frayed; the golden arabesques upon the covers had long
since shed their eyes of inset gems, the jewelled clasp locking its
learning up from vulgar gaze was bent and open. Yet it was a lordly
tome with an odour of sanctity about it, and lifting it with
difficulty, I noticed on its cover a red stain of mouse's blood. Those
who put it to this quaint use of mouse-trap had already had some sport,
b