ter and make the tea, for she did not like the
servants to be kept up for fear of fire.

No one had yet been into the lodgings but herself, Jean, and the
workmen, that the surprise might be the greater at their being so
pretty.

Jean begged them all to wait a moment in the ante-room. He wanted to
light the lamps and candles, and he left Mme. Rosemilly in the dark
with his father and brother; then he cried! "Come in!" opening the
double door to its full width.

The glass gallery, lighted by a chandelier and little colored lamps
hidden among palms, india-rubber plants and flowers, was first seen
like a scene on the stage. There was a spasm of surprise. Roland,
dazzled by such luxury, muttered an oath, and felt inclined to clap
his hands as if it were a pantomime scene. They then went into the
first drawing-room, a small room hung with dead gold and furnished to
match. The larger drawing-room--the lawyer's consulting-room, very
simple, hung with light salmon-color, was dignified in style.

Jean sat down in his armchair in front of his writing-table loaded
with books, and in a solemn, rather stilted tone, he began:

"Yes, madame, the letter of the law is explicit, and, assuming the
consent I promised you, it affords me absolute certainty that the
matter we discussed will come to a happy conclusion within three
months."

He looked at Mme. Rosemilly, who began to smile and glanced at Mme.
Roland. Madame Roland took her hand and pressed it. Jean, in high
spirits, cut a caper like a schoolboy, exclaiming: "Hah! How well the
voice carries in this room; it would be capital for speaking in."

And he declaimed:

"If humanity alone, if the instinct of natural benevolence which we
feel toward all who suffer, were the motive of the acquittal we expect
of you, I should appeal to your compassion, gentlemen of the jury, to
your hearts as fathers and as men; but we have law on our side, and it
is the point of law only which we shall submit to your judgment."

Pierre was looking at this home which might have been his, and he was
restive under his brother's frolics, thinking him really too silly and
witless.

Mme. Roland opened a door on the right.

"This is the bedroom," said she.

She had devoted herself to its decoration with all her mother's love.
The hangings were of Rouen cretonne imitating old Normandy chintz, and
the Louis XV design--a shepherdess, in a medallion held in the beaks
of a pair of doves--gave the walls,