e said that it was a
great curtain sheltering the long, untroubled sleep of wealth, a thick
curtain behind which nothing could be heard save the soft closing of a
porte-cochere, the rattling of the milkmen's tin cans, the bells of a
herd of asses trotting by, followed by the short, panting breath of
their conductor, and the rumbling of Jenkins' coupe beginning its daily
round.

First of all, to the hotel de Mora. On the Quai d'Orleans, beside the
Spanish embassy, stood a superb palace with its principal entrance on
Rue de Lille, and a door on the riverside, and long terraces which
formed a continuation of those of the embassy. Between two high,
ivy-covered walls, connected by imposing stone arches, the coupe flew
like an arrow, announced by two strokes of a clanging bell, which
aroused Jenkins from the trance in which the perusal of his newspaper
seemed to have plunged him. Then the wheels rolled less noisily over
the gravel of a vast courtyard and stopped, after a graceful sweep, at
the front steps, above which was spread a circular awning. One could
see indistinctly through the mist half a score of carriages in a line,
and the silhouettes of English grooms leading the duke's saddle-horse
up and down an avenue of acacias, all leafless at that season and
standing naked in their bark. Everything revealed well-ordered,
pompous, assured luxury.

"It makes no difference how early I come, others are always here before
me," said Jenkins, glancing at the line in which his coupe took its
place; but, certain of not being compelled to wait, with head erect and
a tranquil air of authority, he went up the official steps, over which
so many trembling ambitions, so many stumbling anxieties passed every
day.

Even in the reception-room, high-studded, and resonant as a church,
which two huge fires filled with gleaming life, notwithstanding the
great stoves burning day and night, the magnificence of the
establishment burst upon one in warm and heady puffs. There was a
suggestion of the hot-house and the drying-room as well. Great heat and
abundant light; white wainscoting, white marble statues, immense
windows, nothing confined or close, and yet an equable atmosphere well
fitted to encompass the existence of some delicate, over-refined,
nervous mortal. Jenkins expanded in that factitious sunlight of wealth;
he saluted with a "good-morning, boys," the powdered Swiss with the
broad gilt baldric and the footmen in short clothes and blu