nothing
transitory; all seems eternal there!

The ground-floor is devoted wholly to the reception-rooms. The old,
unchangeable provincial spirit pervades them. The great square salon has
four windows, modestly cased in woodwork painted gray. A single oblong
mirror is placed above the fireplace; the top of its frame represented
the Dawn led by the Hours, and painted in camaieu (two shades of one
color). This style of painting infested the decorative art of the day,
especially above door-frames, where the artist displayed his eternal
Seasons, and made you, in most houses in the centre of France, abhor
the odious Cupids, endlessly employed in skating, gleaning, twirling,
or garlanding one another with flowers. Each window was draped in green
damask curtains, looped up by heavy cords, which made them resemble a
vast dais. The furniture, covered with tapestry, the woodwork, painted
and varnished, and remarkable for the twisted forms so much the fashion
in the last century, bore scenes from the fables of La Fontaine on the
chair-backs; some of this tapestry had been mended. The ceiling was
divided at the centre of the room by a huge beam, from which depended an
old chandelier of rock-crystal swathed in green gauze. On the fireplace
were two vases in Sevres blue, and two old girandoles attached to the
frame of the mirror, and a clock, the subject of which, taken from
the last scene of the "Deserteur," proved the enormous popularity of
Sedaine's work. This clock, of bronze-gilt, bore eleven personages
upon it, each about four inches tall. At the back the Deserter was seen
issuing from prison between the soldiers; in the foreground the young
woman lay fainting, and pointing to his pardon. On the walls of this
salon were several of the more recent portraits of the family,--one
or two by Rigaud, and three pastels by Latour. Four card tables, a
backgammon board, and a piquet table occupied the vast room, the only
one in the house, by the bye, which was ceiled.

The dining-room, paved in black and white stone, not ceiled, and its
beams painted, was furnished with one of those enormous sideboards with
marble tops, required by the war waged in the provinces against the
human stomach. The walls, painted in fresco, represented a flowery
trellis. The seats were of varnished cane, and the doors of natural
wood. All things about the place carried out the patriarchal air which
emanated from the inside as well as the outside of the house.