e, was too heavy, and the
very dark green velvet used to cover the benches added to the gloom of
this entrance--not, to be sure, an important room, but giving a first
impression--just as we measure a man's intelligence by his first
address. An ante-room is a kind of preface which announces what is to
follow, but promises nothing.

The young husband wondered whether his wife could really have chosen the
lamp of an antique pattern, which hung in the centre of this bare hall,
the pavement of black and white marble, and the paper in imitation of
blocks of stone, with green moss on them in places. A handsome, but
not new, barometer hung on the middle of one of the walls, as if to
accentuate the void. At the sight of it all, he looked round at his
wife; he saw her so much pleased by the red braid binding to the cotton
curtains, so satisfied with the barometer and the strictly decent statue
that ornamented a large Gothic stove, that he had not the barbarous
courage to overthrow such deep convictions. Instead of blaming his wife,
Granville blamed himself, accusing himself of having failed in his duty
of guiding the first steps in Paris of a girl brought up at Bayeux.

From this specimen, what might not be expected of the other rooms? What
was to be looked for from a woman who took fright at the bare legs of
a Caryatid, and who would not look at a chandelier or a candle-stick if
she saw on it the nude outlines of an Egyptian bust? At this date the
school of David was at the height of its glory; all the art of France
bore the stamp of his correct design and his love of antique types,
which indeed gave his pictures the character of colored sculpture. But
none of these devices of Imperial luxury found civic rights under Madame
de Granville's roof. The spacious, square drawing-room remained as it
had been left from the time of Louis XV., in white and tarnished gold,
lavishly adorned by the architect with checkered lattice-work and the
hideous garlands due to the uninventive designers of the time. Still, if
harmony at least had prevailed, if the furniture of modern mahogany had
but assumed the twisted forms of which Boucher's corrupt taste first set
the fashion, Angelique's room would only have suggested the fantastic
contrast of a young couple in the nineteenth century living as though
they were in the eighteenth; but a number of details were in ridiculous
discord. The consoles, the clocks, the candelabra, were decorated with
the m