ique pointed out to him that this part of Paris, known as the
Marais, was within easy reach of the Palais de Justice, and that the
lawyers they knew lived in the neighborhood. A fairly large garden
made the apartment particularly advantageous to a young couple; the
children--if Heaven should send them any--could play in the open air;
the courtyard was spacious, and there were good stables.

The lawyer wished to live in the Chaussee d'Antin, where everything is
fresh and bright, where the fashions may be seen while still new, where
a well-dressed crowd throngs the Boulevards, and the distance is less to
the theatres or places of amusement; but he was obliged to give way to
the coaxing ways of a young wife, who asked this as his first favor; so,
to please her, he settled in the Marais. Granville's duties required him
to work hard--all the more, because they were new to him--so he devoted
himself in the first place to furnishing his private study and arranging
his books. He was soon established in a room crammed with papers, and
left the decoration of the house to his wife. He was all the better
pleased to plunge Angelique into the bustle of buying furniture and
fittings, the source of so much pleasure and of so many associations to
most young women, because he was rather ashamed of depriving her of his
company more often than the usages of early married life require. As
soon as his work was fairly under way, he gladly allowed his wife
to tempt him out of his study to consider the effect of furniture or
hangings, which he had before only seen piecemeal or unfinished.

If the old adage is true that says a woman may be judged of from her
front door, her rooms must express her mind with even greater fidelity.
Madame de Granville had perhaps stamped the various things she had
ordered with the seal of her own character; the young lawyer was
certainly startled by the cold, arid solemnity that reigned in these
rooms; he found nothing to charm his taste; everything was discordant,
nothing gratified the eye. The rigid mannerism that prevailed in the
sitting-room at Bayeux had invaded his home; the broad panels were
hollowed in circles, and decorated with those arabesques of which
the long, monotonous mouldings are in such bad taste. Anxious to find
excuses for his wife, the young husband began again, looking first at
the long and lofty ante-room through which the apartment was entered.
The color of the panels, as ordered by his wif