His house was spacious and commodious, and furnished with
profusion and elegance. A suit of apartments was assigned to me,
in which I was permitted to reign uncontroled and access was
permitted to a well furnished library. My food was furnished in my
own room, prepared in the manner which I had previously directed.
Occasionally Ludloe would request my company to breakfast, when an
hour was usually consumed in earnest or sprightly conversation. At
all other times he was invisible, and his apartments, being wholly
separate from mine, I had no opportunity of discovering in what way
his hours were employed.

He defended this mode of living as being most compatible with
liberty. He delighted to expatiate on the evils of cohabitation.
Men, subjected to the same regimen, compelled to eat and sleep and
associate at certain hours, were strangers to all rational
independence and liberty. Society would never be exempt from
servitude and misery, till those artificial ties which held human
beings together under the same roof were dissolved. He endeavoured
to regulate his own conduct in pursuance of these principles, and
to secure to himself as much freedom as the present regulations of
society would permit. The same independence which he claimed for
himself he likewise extended to me. The distribution of my own
time, the selection of my own occupations and companions should
belong to myself.

But these privileges, though while listening to his arguments
I could not deny them to be valuable, I would have willingly
dispensed with. The solitude in which I lived became daily more
painful. I ate and drank, enjoyed clothing and shelter, without