nate her motherhood.
Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable sadness which
surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any such
concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the continual
necessity for action. All true love becomes to a woman an active
contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less profound,
according to her nature.

"Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile," said the countess,
whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the
ostensible object of her visit.

The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its exterior.
On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and the
architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter
complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had
made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the farther
end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the
kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a
parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the
divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet
for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the furniture of
this room in keeping with its original decoration.

At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated
value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed
chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall
embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the
second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent
cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint
Antoine. The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of
well-chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the
chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic
creation. As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it
with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white
cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs
covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in
mahogany. This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes, was
heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-guns
suspended on the walls. These adornments, which cost but little, were
talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of oriental