orld below is seen.
How otherwise can we account for the perennial good faith which leads
to so many repeated presentments of the same effects, and the constant
ignoring of warnings given by children, such a terror to their parents,
or by husbands, so familiar as they are with the peacock airs of their
wives? Monsieur de la Baudraye had the frankness of a man who opens an
umbrella at the first drop of rain. When his wife was started on the
subject of Negro emancipation or the improvement of convict prisons,
he would take up his little blue cap and vanish without a sound, in the
certainty of being able to get to Saint-Thibault to see off a cargo of
puncheons, and return an hour later to find the discussion approaching a
close. Or, if he had no business to attend to, he would go for a walk on
the Mall, whence he commanded the lovely panorama of the Loire valley,
and take a draught of fresh air while his wife was performing a sonata
in words, or a dialectical duet.

Once fairly established as a Superior Woman, Dinah was eager to prove
her devotion to the most remarkable creations of art. She threw herself
into the propaganda of the romantic school, including, under Art, poetry
and painting, literature and sculpture, furniture and the opera. Thus
she became a mediaevalist. She was also interested in any treasures that
dated from the Renaissance, and employed her allies as so many devoted
commission agents. Soon after she was married, she had become possessed
of the Rougets' furniture, sold at Issoudun early in 1824. She purchased
some very good things at Nivernais and the Haute-Loire. At the New
Year and on her birthday her friends never failed to give her some
curiosities. These fancies found favor in the eyes of Monsieur de la
Baudraye; they gave him an appearance of sacrificing a few crowns to his
wife's taste. In point of fact, his land mania allowed him to think of
nothing but the estate of Anzy.

These "antiquities" at that time cost much less than modern furniture.
By the end of five or six years the ante-room, the dining-room, the two
drawing-rooms, and the boudoir which Dinah had arranged on the ground
floor of La Baudraye, every spot even to the staircase, were crammed
with masterpieces collected in the four adjacent departments. These
surroundings, which were called _queer_ by the neighbors, were quite in
harmony with Dinah. All these Marvels, so soon to be the rage, struck
the imagination of the strangers intro