If I had had my choice of all the rooms in the castle, I should have chosen the very one that had been assigned me.  It was on the first—­not the ground—­floor, at the end of a long vaulted gallery and in a tower.  There was a deep alcove from the bed,—­a window looking down upon the calm waters of the moat, and giving glimpses, through the trees, of fields and woods beyond,—­a fireplace with a cheerful fire, which had evidently been kindled the moment my arrival was known,—­the tessellated floor with its waxen gloss,—­and the usual furniture of a French bed-room, a good table and comfortable chairs.  A sugar-bowl filled with sparkling beet sugar, and a decanter of fresh water, on the mantel-piece, would have shown me, if there had been nothing else to show it, that I was in France.  The General looked round the room to make sure that all was comfortably arranged for me, and then renewing his welcome, and telling me that the castle-bell would ring for dinner in about half an hour, left me to take possession of my quarters and change my dress.

If I had not been afraid of getting belated, I should have sat down awhile to collect my thoughts and endeavor to realize where I was.  But as it was, I could do little more than unpack my trunk, arrange my books and writing-materials on the table, and change my dusty clothes, before the bell rang.  Oh, how that bell sounded through the long corridor from its watch-tower over the gateway!  And how I shrank back when I found myself on the threshold of the hall and saw the inner room full!  The General must have divined my feelings; for, the moment he saw me, he came forward to meet me, and, taking me by the arm, presented me to all the elders of the party in turn.  He apparently supposed, that, with the start I had had in the Rue d’Anjou, I should make my way among the younger ones myself.

It was a family circle covering three generations:  the General, his son and daughter-in-law and two daughters, and ten grandchildren,—­among whom I was glad to see some of both sexes sufficiently near my own age to open a very pleasant prospect for me whenever I should have learnt French enough to feel at home among them.  Nor was the domestic character of the group broken by the presence of a son of Casimir Perier, who was soon to marry George Lafayette’s eldest daughter, the Count de Segur, the General’s uncle, though but a month or two his elder, and the Count de Tracy, father of Madame George de Lafayette, and founder of the French school of Ideology, companions, both of them, of the General’s youth, and, at this serene close of a life of strange vicissitudes and bitter trials, still his friends.  Levasseur, his secretary, who had accompanied him in his visit to the United States, with his German wife, a young gentleman whose name I have forgotten, but who was the private tutor of young Jules de Lasteyrie, and Major Frye, an English half-pay officer, of whom I shall have a good deal more to say by-and-by, completed