ted blue, on
which twine garlands of golden flowers. Two old buffers face each other;
on their shelves, rubbed with Breton persistency by Mariotte the cook,
can be seen, as in the days when kings were as poor in 1200 as the
du Guaisnics are in 1830, four old goblets, an ancient embossed
soup-tureen, and two salt-cellars, all of silver; also many pewter
plates and many pitchers of gray and blue pottery, bearing arabesque
designs and the arms of the du Guaisnics, covered by hinged pewter lids.
The chimney-piece is modernized. Its condition proves that the family
has lived in this room for the last century. It is of carved stone in
the style of the Louis XV. period, and is ornamented with a mirror, let
in to the back with gilt beaded moulding. This anachronism, to which the
family is indifferent, would grieve a poet. On the mantel-shelf, covered
with red velvet, is a tall clock of tortoise-shell inlaid with brass,
flanked on each side with a silver candelabrum of singular design. A
large square table, with solid legs, fills the centre of this room;
the chairs are of turned wood covered with tapestry. On a round table
supported by a single leg made in the shape of a vine-shoot, which
stands before a window looking into the garden, is a lamp of an odd
kind. This lamp has a common glass globe, about the size of an ostrich
egg, which is fastened into a candle-stick by a glass tube. Through a
hole at the top of the globe issues a wick which passes through a sort
of reed of brass, drawing the nut-oil held in the globe through its own
length coiled like a tape-worm in a surgeon's phial. The windows which
look into the garden, like those that look upon the court-yard, are
mullioned in stone with hexagonal leaded panes, and are draped by
curtains, with heavy valances and stout cords, of an ancient stuff
of crimson silk with gold reflections, called in former days either
brocatelle or small brocade.

On each of the two upper stories of the house there are but two rooms.
The first is the bedroom of the head of the family, the second is that
of the children. Guests were lodged in chambers beneath the roof.
The servants slept above the kitchens and stables. The pointed roof,
protected with lead at its angles and edges, has a noble pointed window
on each side, one looking down upon the court-yard, the other on the
garden. These windows, rising almost to the level of the roof, have
slender, delicate casings, the carvings of which have cr