his horses; and
this despite his pretensions with respect to advanced literature and
philosophy, his collections of curios, such as the bourgeois of to-day
does not yet understand, his furniture, his pottery, his pewter-work,
and particularly his bookbindings, of which he was very proud. And
he was turning his wife into a copy of himself, perverting her by his
extravagant opinions and his promiscuous friendships, so that the little
devotee who had been confided to his keeping was now on the high road
to every kind of folly. She still went to mass and partook of the holy
communion; but she was each day growing more and more familiar
with wrong-doing. A disaster must surely be at the end of it all,
particularly as he foolishly behaved to her in a rough, jeering way,
which greatly hurt her feelings, and led her to dream of being loved
with gentleness.

When Mathieu entered the house, which displayed eight lofty windows on
each of the stories of its ornate Renaissance facade, he laughed lightly
as he thought: "These folks don't have to wait for a monthly pittance of
three hundred francs, with just thirty sous in hand."

The hall was extremely rich, all bronze and marble. On the right hand
were the dining-room and two drawing-rooms; on the left a billiard-room,
a smoking-room, and a winter garden. On the first floor, in front of
the broad staircase, was Seguin's so-called "cabinet," a vast apartment,
sixteen feet high, forty feet long, and six-and-twenty feet wide, which
occupied all the central part of the house; while the husband's bed and
dressing rooms were on the right, and those of the wife and children
on the left hand. Up above, on the second floor, two complete suites of
rooms were kept in reserve for the time when the children should have
grown up.

A footman, who knew Mathieu, at once took him upstairs to the cabinet
and begged him to wait there, while Monsieur finished dressing. For a
moment the visitor fancied himself alone and glanced round the spacious
room, feeling interested in its adornments, the lofty windows of old
stained glass, the hangings of old Genoese velvet and brocaded silk, the
oak bookcases showing the highly ornamented backs of the volumes they
contained; the tables laden with bibelots, bronzes, marbles, goldsmith's
work, glass work, and the famous collection of modern pewter-work. Then
Eastern carpets were spread out upon all sides; there were low seats and
couches for every mood of idlene