r low one, with three windows
overlooking the road which passes the hotel.

A very large looking-glass in a gilt frame surmounted the mantelpiece, on
which stood two or three little blue vases. Paper of a light colour and a
large flowing arabesque pattern with a broad frieze covered the walls.
There was not a single picture of any kind in the room, neither steel
engraving, nor lithograph, nor chromo; and remembering what pictures
usually are, even in the best of hotels, it was perhaps just as well that
there should have been none in that room at the Queen's. Yet during the
many hours I spent there the bareness of the walls often worried me.

Against the one that faced the fireplace stood a small sideboard. Then on
another side was a sofa, and here and there were half a dozen chairs. The
room was rich in tables, it counted no fewer than five. On a folding
card-table in one corner M. Zola's stock of letter and 'copy' paper, his
weighing scales for letters, his envelopes, pens, and pencils, were duly
set out. Then in front of the central window was the table at which he
worked every morning. It was of mahogany, little more than three feet
long and barely two feet wide. Whenever he raised his eyes from his
writing, he could see the road below him, and the houses across the way.
On a similar table at another of the windows he usually kept such books
and reviews as reached him from France.

In the centre of the room, under the electric lights--which, however,
were only fitted towards the end of M. Zola's sojourn at the hotel, so
that throughout the winter a paraffin lamp supplied the necessary
illumination--stood the table at which one lunched and dined. It was
round and would just accommodate four persons. Finally, beside M. Zola's
favourite arm-chair, near the fireplace, was a little gipsy table, on
which he usually kept the day's newspapers, and perchance the volume he
was reading at the time.

A doorway on the same side as the fireplace gave ingress to the
bedchamber, which was smaller than the sitting-room, and adequately, but
by no means luxuriously furnished.

On the little writing-table near the middle window were first a small
inkstand belonging to the hotel, then a few paper-weights covering
memoranda jotted down on little square pieces of paper, about three
inches long either way, together with an old yellowish newspaper which
did duty as a blotting pad; and a pen with a 'j' nib and a very heavy
ivory handle,