think of them afterwards, to lie just on the borderland between reality
and dreams, so that you can scarcely tell to which side they most
belong.

"The room, the ancient Hall of Audience, stood above a row of cellars
with grated air-holes, once the prison cells of the old court-house,
now converted into a kitchen. I do not know that the magnificent lofty
chimney-piece of the Louvre, with its marvelous carving, seemed more
wonderful to me than the vast open hearth of the salon d'Esgrignon when
I saw it for the first time. It was covered like a melon with a network
of tracery. Over it stood an equestrian portrait of Henri III., under
whom the ancient duchy of appanage reverted to the crown; it was a great
picture executed in low relief, and set in a carved and gilded frame.
The ceiling spaces between the chestnut cross-beams in the fine old
roof were decorated with scroll-work patterns; there was a little faded
gilding still left along the angles. The walls were covered with Flemish
tapestry, six scenes from the Judgment of Solomon, framed in golden
garlands, with satyrs and cupids playing among the leaves. The parquet
floor had been laid down by the present Marquis, and Chesnel had picked
up the furniture at sales of the wreckage of old chateaux between
1793 and 1795; so that there were Louis Quatorze consoles, tables,
clock-cases, andirons, candle-sconces and tapestry-covered chairs, which
marvelously completed a stately room, large out of all proportion to the
house. Luckily, however, there was an equally lofty ante-chamber,
the ancient Salle des Pas Perdus of the presidial, which communicated
likewise with the magistrate's deliberating chamber, used by the
d'Esgrignons as a dining-room.

"Beneath the old paneling, amid the threadbare braveries of a bygone
day, some eight or ten dowagers were drawn up in state in a quavering
line; some with palsied heads, others dark and shriveled like mummies;
some erect and stiff, others bowed and bent, but all of them tricked out
in more or less fantastic costumes as far as possible removed from
the fashion of the day, with be-ribboned caps above their curled and
powdered 'heads,' and old discolored lace. No painter however earnest,
no caricature however wild, ever caught the haunting fascination of
those aged women; they come back to me in dreams; their puckered faces
shape themselves in my memory whenever I meet an old woman who puts
me in mind of them by some faint resemblance