and ladies whose husbands are abroad happily congregate, I returned to
Paris refreshed.

Marshall and I were no longer on speaking terms, but I saw him daily, in a
new overcoat, of a cut admirably adapted to his figure, sweeping past the
fans and the jet ornaments of the Passage des Panoramas. The coat
interested me, and I remembered that if I had not broken with him I should
have been able to ask him some essential questions concerning it. Of such
trifles as this the sincerest friendships are made; he was as necessary to
me as I to him, and after some demur on his part a reconciliation was
effected.

Then I took an _appartement_ in one of the old houses in Rue de la
Tour des Dames, for the windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden
with a few dilapidated statues. It was Marshall of course who undertook the
task of furnishing, and he lavished on the rooms the fancies of an
imagination that suggested the collaboration of a courtesan of high degree
and a fifth-rate artist. Nevertheless, our salon was a pretty
resort--English cretonne of a very happy design--vine leaves, dark green
and golden, broken up by many fluttering jays. The walls were stretched
with this colourful cloth, and the armchairs and the couches were to match.
The drawing-room was in cardinal red, hung from the middle of the ceiling
and looped up to give the appearance of a tent; a faun, in terra cotta,
laughed in the red gloom, and there were Turkish couches and lamps. In
another room you faced an altar, a Buddhist temple, a statue of the Apollo,
and a bust of Shelley. The bedrooms were made unconventual with cushioned
seats and rich canopies; and in picturesque corners there were censers,
great church candlesticks, and palms; then think of the smell of burning
incense and wax and you will have imagined the sentiment of our apartment
in Rue de la Tour des Dames. I bought a Persian cat, and a python that made