s look into the
street, the rest run round the ample court-yard of the house. To get at
him you go up a flight of stone stairs that four people can easily mount
abreast; when you enter his door, from the little hall paved with stone
and marble, you pass from the sitting-rooms one into the other--for they
all form a suite; while the bed-rooms lie mostly along a corridor, into
which they open. Once up the two flights of stairs that lead to the
doorway, and the mounting, whether for masters or servants, is done
with. The kitchen is at the furthest end, away from the other rooms, and
is approached by a back staircase from the court-yard. There are no
beggars nor dogs, nor butcher's boys, nor other bores, except what the
concierge at the gateway allows to come in; and though the street is
rather noisy, being in a fashionable quarter, yet the court-yard is
perfectly quiet, and free from all plagues of organs, singers, &c. The
rooms are, one and all, _twelve_ feet high; their Windows down to the
ground; the floors of solid oak, polished till you can slide on them;
the doors are in carved oak, painted white and richly gilt; the
chimney-pieces are all marble--none of the flimsy thin slabs of Paragon
Place, but good solid blocks, cut out from the red quarries of the
Pyrenees; with polished brass dogs in the fireplaces, and large logs of
flaming wood across then. The drawing-rooms are hung in silk on the
walls; the other rooms are tastefully papered. There is abundance of
good furniture, which, from the ample size of the apartments--the
principal room being thirty feet by twenty--sets off the proportions of
the dwelling without blocking it up. Dubois has not a four-post bed in
his house; no more has any man in France. They are all those elegant and
comfortable things which we know a French bed to be; and the long
sweeping folds of the red and white curtains that come down to the floor
from the ceiling, form a graceful contrast to the curves of the other
furniture. The walls are all of good solid stone, two feet thick on the
outside; the house has been built these fifty years, and is of a better
colour than when first put up; the windows are richly ornamented in
their frames without, and form commodious recesses for settees within.
You may dine twenty, and dance forty people here! or you may throw your
rooms open, give a soiree, (no boiled mutton affair, remember; but
music, dancing, and cards; coffee, ice, and champagne,) and cram e