with 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