ine's ambition had been to be able to purchase a set
of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a rose
pattern, and with mahogany in swan's neck style, with a sofa. But this
would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the fact
that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for
this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing
the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?

Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop's
bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the
bed,--a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the
shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet,
which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there
were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the
other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was
a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of
wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the
chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two
garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered
with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the
chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed
on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the
gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an inkstand,
loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes; before the
table an arm-chair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu, borrowed
from the oratory.

Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of
the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at
the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented,
one the Abbe of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbe
Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbe of Grand-Champ, order of Citeaux,
diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after
the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left
them. They were priests, and probably donors--two reasons for respecting
them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had
been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his
benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire
having taken the pictu