As regarded his own personal improvement in learning, these engagements, of course, were, for the most part, a wasteful expenditure of time and opportunities for study ; but there was one of them—that with the Marescalchi family ^{Note 1} which supplied in the end an occasion for extending and improving his knowledge of languages. The library of the Marescalchi palace is especially rich in that department ; and, as the modest and engaging manners of Mezzofanti quickly established him on the footing of a valued friend, rather than of an instructor, in the family, he enjoyed unrestricted use of the opportunities for his own peculiar studies which it afforded. In this family, too, one of the most ancient and distinguished in Bologna, he had frequent opportunities of meeting and conversing with foreigners, each in the language of his own country.  

Notes