iations, and sheds over them, from that one feeling which it
cherishes the most, a blending and a mellowing hue.

It was at night that I re-entered Paris. I did not tarry long at my
hotel, before (though it was near upon midnight) I conveyed myself to
Lord Bolingbroke's lodgings. Knowing his engagements at St. Germains,
where the Chevalier (who had but a very few weeks before returned
to France, after the crude and unfortunate affair of 1715), chiefly
resided, I was not very sanguine in my hopes of finding him at Paris.
I was, however, agreeably surprised. His servant would have ushered me
into his study, but I was willing to introduce myself. I withheld the
servant, and entered the room alone. The door was ajar, and Bolingbroke
neither heard nor saw me. There was something in his attitude and aspect
which made me pause to survey him, before I made myself known. He
was sitting by a table covered with books. A large folio (it was the
Casaubon edition of Polybius) was lying open before him. I recognized
the work at once: it was a favourite book with Bolingbroke, and we had
often discussed the merits of its author. I smiled as I saw that that
book, which has to statesmen so peculiar an attraction, made still the
study from which the busy, restless, ardent, and exalted spirit of the
statesman before me drew its intellectual food. But at the moment
in which I entered his eye was absent from the page, and turned
abstractedly in an opposite though still downcast direction. His
countenance was extremely pale, his lips were tightly compressed, and an
air of deep thought, mingled as it seemed to me with sadness, made the
ruling expression of his lordly and noble features. "It is the torpor of
ambition after one of its storms," said I, inly; and I approached, and
laid my hand on his shoulder.

After our mutual greetings, I said, "Have the dead so strong an
attraction that at this hour they detain the courted and courtly
Bolingbroke from the admiration and converse of the living?"

The statesman looked at me earnestly: "Have you heard the news of the
day?" said he.

"How is it possible? I have but just arrived at Paris."

"You do not know, then, that I have resigned my office under the
Chevalier!"

"Resigned your office!"

"Resigned is a wrong word: I received a dismissal. Immediately on his
return the Chevalier sent for me, embraced me, desired me to prepare
to follow him to Lorraine; and three days afterwards came the Duk