oman whose prayers can rescue
souls from your purgatory--tell her I was in bed, as I was playing
last night, and that I am just getting up."

The Baroness, shown into Josepha's handsome drawing-room, did not note
how long she was kept waiting there, though it was a long half hour.
This room, entirely redecorated even since Josepha had had the house,
was hung with silk in purple and gold color. The luxury which fine
gentlemen were wont to lavish on their _petites maisons_, the scenes
of their profligacy, of which the remains still bear witness to the
follies from which they were so aptly named, was displayed to
perfection, thanks to modern inventiveness, in the four rooms opening
into each other, where the warm temperature was maintained by a system
of hot-air pipes with invisible openings.

The Baroness, quite bewildered, examined each work of art with the
greatest amazement. Here she found fortunes accounted for that melt in
the crucible under which pleasure and vanity feed the devouring
flames. This woman, who for twenty-six years had lived among the dead
relics of imperial magnificence, whose eyes were accustomed to carpets
patterned with faded flowers, rubbed gilding, silks as forlorn as her
heart, half understood the powerful fascinations of vice as she
studied its results. It was impossible not to wish to possess these
beautiful things, these admirable works of art, the creation of the
unknown talent which abounds in Paris in our day and produces
treasures for all Europe. Each thing had the novel charm of unique
perfection. The models being destroyed, every vase, every figure,
every piece of sculpture was the original. This is the crowning grace
of modern luxury. To own the thing which is not vulgarized by the two
thousand wealthy citizens whose notion of luxury is the lavish display
of the splendors that shops can supply, is the stamp of true luxury
--the luxury of the fine gentlemen of the day, the shooting stars of
the Paris firmament.

As she examined the flower-stands, filled with the choicest exotic
plants, mounted in chased brass and inlaid in the style of Boulle, the
Baroness was scared by the idea of the wealth in this apartment. And
this impression naturally shed a glamour over the person round whom
all this profusion was heaped. Adeline imagined that Josepha Mirah
--whose portrait by Joseph Bridau was the glory of the adjoining
boudoir--must be a singer of genius, a Malibran, and she expected to
see