is a
wood-shed and wash-house, a stable for two horses and a coach-house,
over which are some little lofts for the storage of oats, hay, and
straw, where, at that time, the doctor's servant slept.

The hall which the little peasant and her uncle admired with such wonder
is decorated with wooden carvings of the time of Louis XV., painted
gray, and a handsome marble chimney-piece, over which Flore beheld
herself in a large mirror without any upper division and with a carved
and gilded frame. On the panelled walls of the room, from space to
space, hung several pictures, the spoil of various religious houses,
such as the abbeys of Deols, Issoudun, Saint-Gildas, La Pree,
Chezal-Beniot, Saint-Sulpice, and the convents of Bourges and Issoudun,
which the liberality of our kings had enriched with the precious
gifts of the glorious works called forth by the Renaissance. Among the
pictures obtained by the Descoings and inherited by Rouget, was a Holy
Family by Albano, a Saint-Jerome of Demenichino, a Head of Christ by
Gian Bellini, a Virgin of Leonardo, a Bearing of the Cross by Titian,
which formerly belonged to the Marquis de Belabre (the one who sustained
a siege and had his head cut off under Louis XIII.); a Lazarus of Paul
Veronese, a Marriage of the Virgin by the priest Genois, two church
paintings by Rubens, and a replica of a picture by Perugino, done either
by Perugino himself or by Raphael; and finally, two Correggios and one
Andrea del Sarto.

The Descoings had culled these treasures from three hundred church
pictures, without knowing their value, and selecting them only for their
good preservation. Many were not only in magnificent frames, but some
were still under glass. Perhaps it was the beauty of the frames and the
value of the glass that led the Descoings to retain the pictures. The
furniture of the room was not wanting in the sort of luxury we prize in
these days, though at that time it had no value in Issoudun. The clock,
standing on the mantle-shelf between two superb silver candlesticks with
six branches, had an ecclesiastical splendor which revealed the hand of
Boulle. The armchairs of carved oak, covered with tapestry-work due to
the devoted industry of women of high rank, would be treasured in these
days, for each was surmounted with a crown and coat-of-arms. Between the
windows stood a rich console, brought from some castle, on whose marble
slab stood an immense China jar, in which the doctor kept his tob