ich spring the garlands of the ceiling. Charming
paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels between the
female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,--boar's-heads,
salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which fantastically
suggest men and women and children, and rival the whimsical imagination
of the Chinese,--the people who best understand, to my thinking
at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the house finds a
bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter only when
required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no secrets. The
panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the embrasures, both
of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room is heated from
below. Every window looks forth on some delightful view.

This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns
on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The
ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.

After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits the
magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room
unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this suite
of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at
the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from
above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built at various
epochs--and to think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in
1793! Good heavens! why can't people understand that the marvels of art
are impossible in a land where there are no great fortunes, no secure,
luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing kings why not leave us a
few little princelings with money in their pockets?

At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring
them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we