er sleeping; he will soon pursue a long and
beautiful route. Since we are at liberty to turn to all points of the
map, we will fix our eyes upon the city of Narbonne.

Behold the Mediterranean, not far distant, washing with its blue waters
the sandy shores. Penetrate into that city resembling Athens; and to find
him who reigns there, follow that dark and irregular street, mount the
steps of the old archiepiscopal palace, and enter the first and largest
of its apartments.

This was a very long salon, lighted by a series of high lancet windows,
of which the upper part only retained the blue, yellow, and red panes
that shed a mysterious light through the apartment. A large round table
occupied its entire breadth, near the great fireplace; around this table,
covered with a colored cloth and scattered with papers and portfolios,
were seated, bending over their pens, eight secretaries copying letters
which were handed to them from a smaller table. Other men quietly
arranged the completed papers in the shelves of a bookcase, partly filled
with books bound in black.

Notwithstanding the number of persons assembled in the room, one might
have heard the movements of the wings of a fly. The only interruption to
the silence was the sound of pens rapidly gliding over paper, and a
shrill voice dictating, stopping every now and then to cough. This voice
proceeded from a great armchair placed beside the fire, which was
blazing, notwithstanding the heat of the season and of the country. It
was one of those armchairs that you still see in old castles, and which
seem made to read one's self to sleep in, so easy is every part of it.
The sitter sinks into a circular cushion of down; if the head leans back,
the cheeks rest upon pillows covered with silk, and the seat juts out so
far beyond the elbows that one may believe the provident upholsterers of
our forefathers sought to provide that the book should make no noise in
falling so as to awaken the sleeper.

But we will quit this digression, and speak of the man who occupied the
chair, and who was very far from sleeping. He had a broad forehead,
bordered with thin white hair, large, mild eyes, a wan face, to which a
small, pointed, white beard gave that air of subtlety and finesse
noticeable in all the portraits of the period of Louis XIII. His mouth
was almost without lips, which Lavater deems an indubitable sign of an
evil mind, and it was framed in a pair of slight gray moustaches and