paper which so religiously catches the fluff and
dust. The mahogany furniture stood round the room, a reproach against
the discovery of America, covered with sanguinary cloth stamped in black
with subjects taken from Fontaine's fables. When I say subjects I
basely flatter the sumptuous taste of Madame Taverneau; it was the same
subject indefinitely repeated--the Fox and the Stork. How luxurious it
was to sit upon a stork's beak! In front of each chair was spread a
piece of carpet, to protect the splendor of the floor, so that the
guests when seated bore a vague resemblance to the bottles and decanters
set round the plated centrepiece of a banquet given to a deputy by his
grateful constituents.

An atrocious troubadour clock ornamented the mantel-piece representing
the templar Bois-Guilbert bearing off a gilded Rebecca upon a silver
horse. On either side of this frightful time-piece were placed two
plated lamps under globes.

This magnificence filled with secret envy more than one housekeeper of
Pont de l'Arche, and even the maid trembled as she dusted. We will not
speak of the spun-glass poodles, little sugar St. Johns, chocolate
Napoleons, a cabinet filled with common china, occupying a conspicuous
place, engravings representing the Adieux to Fontainebleau, Souvenirs
and Regrets, The Fisherman's Family, The Little Poachers, and other
hackneyed subjects. Can you imagine anything like it? For my part, I
never could understand this love for the common-place and the hideous. I
know that every one does not dwell in Alhambras, Louvres, or Parthenons,
but it is so easy to do without a clock to leave the walls bare, to
exist without Manrin's lithographs or Jazet's aquatints!

The people filling the room, seemed to me, in point of vulgarity, the
queerest in the world; their manner of speaking was marvellous,
imitating the florid style of the defunct Prudhomme, the pupil of Brard
and St. Omer. Their heads spread out over their white cravats and
immense shirt collars recalled to mind certain specimens of the gourd
tribe. Some even resemble animals, the lion, the horse, the ass; these,
all things considered, had a vegetable rather than an animal look. Of
the women I will say nothing, having resolved never to ridicule that
charming sex.

Among these human vegetables, Louise appeared like a rose in a cabbage
patch. She wore a simple white dress fastened at the waist by a blue
ribbon; her hair arranged in bandeaux encircled her p