innocent display of vanity. First came the parlor, the corner room, the
walls of which were covered with pearl-gray paper with a design of golden
flowers, while the furniture consisted of some of those white lacquered
Louis XVI. pieces which makers turn out by the gross. The rosewood piano
showed like a big black blot amidst all the rest. Then, overlooking the
Boulevard de Grenelle, came Reine's bedroom, pale blue, with furniture of
polished pine. Her parents' room, a very small apartment, was at the
other end of the flat, separated from the parlor by the dining-room. The
hangings adorning it were yellow; and a bedstead, a washstand, and a
wardrobe, all of thuya, had been crowded into it. Finally the classic
"old carved oak" triumphed in the dining-room, where a heavily gilded
hanging lamp flashed like fire above the table, dazzling in its
whiteness.

"Why, it's delightful," Mathieu, repeated, by way of politeness; "why,
it's a real gem of a place."

In their excitement, father, mother, and daughter never ceased leading
him hither and thither, explaining matters to him and making him feel the
things. He was most struck, by the circumstance that the place recalled
something he had seen before; he seemed to be familiar with the
arrangement of the drawing-room, and with the way in which the nicknacks
in the bedchamber were set out. And all at once he remembered. Influenced
by envy and covert admiration, the Moranges, despite themselves, no
doubt, had tried to copy the Beauchenes. Always short of money as they
were, they could only and by dint of great sacrifices indulge in a
species of make-believe luxury. Nevertheless they were proud of it, and,
by imitating the envied higher class from afar, they imagined that they
drew nearer to it.