ointed together resting on solid, richly-carved trestles, all black with
age. They are apparently covered with a full service for a grand banquet,
and the intendant said they had never been disturbed since they were
prepared for a marriage-feast on the day when the chateau was deserted.

"Perry's quick eye first rested on a large piece of quaint and uncouth
form in the centre of the dais-table, which he at once said must be the
masterpiece of the collection. Imagine my surprise and disappointment on
wiping off some of the dirt to find it nothing but coarse crockery,
somewhat resembling queensware, ornamented with blue enameled figures such
as decorate old preserve-jars at home. I said it looked to me like a
foot-bath, but Perry insisted on examining it, and, removing the cover,
found the bottom was a silver plate with this inscription: 'Presented by
His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV., king of France and Navarre, to his
devoted vassal and servitor, Melun du Guesclin, Sieur de Courance, Dec.
25, 1714.' Perry declared he recognized it as a veritable piece of that
rare faience made by Pierre Clerissy for the Grand Monarch when he coined
all his plate to pay the army in Flanders. The king subsequently gave most
of the set to Villars and his officers after the Peace of Utrecht. Perry
has seen almost every collection in Europe, and he says there are not
fifty pieces of this ware in existence.

"For my part, I was more interested in the zephyr-glasses I found on this
table of the early Venetian manufacture, delicate and graceful as the
flacons of Fairyland. There are imitations of this exquisite glass now
made, but there were none a hundred years ago, and these are
unquestionably genuine. A remarkable chalice also attracted our notice,
and we decided it to be either the bridal or the christening-cup of the
Courance family. It is a mass of solid silver, about fourteen inches high,
on a base of ebony and pearl: it is wrought out of block silver in the
Genoese method, and is designed in deep panels divided by wreathed
columns: these panels are covered with inscriptions, seemingly of names
and dates, most of them illegible--'Robillard Puyraveau du Guesclin,
1602,' being the earliest we could make out. We found several varieties,
or, as Perry says, 'classes,' of porcelain--beautiful plates of Sevres,
painted in the most charming designs by masters to us unknown--and of the
different sorts of this ware there must be several hundre