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Before you arrive at the hall of the Institute, you pass through a handsome antichamber, in which are the statues of Moliere, Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, and Montesquieu. This hall, which is oblong and spacious, formerly served for the meetings of the Academy of Sciences. Its sides are adorned with colonnades, and the ceiling is richly painted and decorated.

Gentlemen of the noblest houses contended for the honour of serving him, and even imperial chamberlains resigned the golden key to the Emperor, to fill a similar office under Wallenstein. He maintained sixty pages, who were instructed by the ablest masters. His antichamber was protected by fifty life guards.

This apartment, which serves as a sort of antichamber to the great Gallery, is, at the present moment, appropriated to the annual monthly exhibition of the productions of living painters, sculptors, architects, engravers, and draughtsmen. Of these modern works, I shall, perhaps, speak on a future occasion.

In the polished Babel of the antichamber of this extraordinary man, I have beheld the starred and glittering representatives of the most distinguished princes of the earth waiting for hours, with exemplary resignation, contemplating themselves, in all their positions, in his reduplicating mirrors, or examining the splendour and exquisite ingenuity of his time pieces, until the silver sound of his little bell announced, that the invoked and lagging moment of ministerial leisure was arrived.

The generals withdrew in silence and confusion; but after a short consultation in the antichamber, they returned to apologize for their late conduct, and offered to sign the paper anew. Nothing now remained, but to obtain a similar assurance from the absent generals, or, on their refusal, to seize their persons.

Sir Arthur came in, and I left my stanzas on the desk of the instrument; very inadvertently I assure thee, though I was afterward far from sorry that they had been forgotten. I have frequently indulged myself in sitting in an antichamber, to listen to her playing and singing. I have thought that she is most impassioned when alone, and perhaps all musicians are so.

The words pleased me, I may say affected me, so very much that I was tempted to endeavour to adapt an air to them; which, when it was written, I several times repeated, and accompanied myself on the piano-forte. Your brother came in just as I had ended; and, from a hint which he purposely gave, I suspect that Frank had been listening in the antichamber.

The beautiful statue of the youthful Cyparissus, by CHAUDET, the most eminent French sculptor, reminds us of the full and elegant form of the fine Greek Bacchus, which decorates the peristyle of the antichamber or Hall of Introduction.

As I very seldom receive visits, and my friend George, the spahi, always comes on foot, I thought it must be my notary coming to stir me up about some business matters; he had been reproaching me the last fortnight for neglecting them. The carriage stopped in front of the doorsteps. I heard the servants running across the antichamber.

What, cried he, when he ruminated upon the subject, can it be excusable in the learned Bertram, whose reputation has filled a fourth part of the circle of Swabia, who twice bore away the prize in the university of Otweiler, to pass these crying sins in silence? It shall not be said. Thus animated, he strided away to the antichamber of Theodore.