threshing
practically ceased, and the time of Ministers was nightly spent in
answering volumes of angry 'Questions,' and in facing motion after
motion for the 'adjournment' of the House.

It was in the midst of all this commotion that I received Prince
Zaleski's brief 'Come and see.' I was flattered and pleased: flattered,
because I suspected that to me alone, of all men, would such an
invitation, coming from him, be addressed; and pleased, because many a
time in the midst of the noisy city street and the garish, dusty world,
had the thought of that vast mansion, that dim and silent chamber,
flooded my mind with a drowsy sense of the romantic, till, from very
excess of melancholy sweetness in the picture, I was fain to close my
eyes. I avow that that lonesome room--gloomy in its lunar bath of soft
perfumed light--shrouded in the sullen voluptuousness of plushy,
narcotic-breathing draperies--pervaded by the mysterious spirit of its
brooding occupant--grew more and more on my fantasy, till the
remembrance had for me all the cool refreshment shed by a
midsummer-night's dream in the dewy deeps of some Perrhoebian grove of
cornel and lotos and ruby stars of the asphodel. It was, therefore, in
all haste that I set out to share for a time in the solitude of my
friend.

Zaleski's reception of me was most cordial; immediately on my entrance
into his sanctum he broke into a perfect torrent of wild, enthusiastic
words, telling me with a kind of rapture, that he was just then
laboriously engaged in co-ordinating to one of the calculi certain new
properties he had discovered in the parabola, adding with infinite
gusto his 'firm' belief that the ancient Assyrians were acquainted with
all our modern notions respecting the parabola itself, the projection
of bodies in general, and of the heavenly bodies in particular; and
must, moreover, from certain inferences of his own in connection with
the Winged Circle, have been conversant with the fact that light is not
an ether, but only the vibration of an ether. He then galloped on to
suggest that I should at once take part with him in his investigations,
and commented on the timeliness of my visit. I, on my part, was anxious
for his opinion on other and far weightier matters than the concerns of
the Assyrians, and intimated as much to him. But for two days he was
firm in his tacit refusal to listen to my story; and, concluding that
he was disinclined to undergo the agony of unrest with whi