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The Purse by Honoré de Balzac
page 12 of 46 (26%)

Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On recognizing
the young artist she bowed, and at the same time, with Parisian
adroitness, and with the presence of mind that pride can lend,
she turned round to shut the door in a glass partition through
which Hippolyte might have caught sight of some linen hung by
lines over patent ironing stoves, an old camp-bed, some
wood-embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the household crockery,
and all the utensils familiar to a small household. Muslin
curtains, fairly white, carefully screened this lumber-room--a
_capharnaum_, as the French call such a domestic laboratory,
--which was lighted by windows looking out on a neighboring yard.

Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, the
furniture, the general effect and condition of this first room,
thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which served both as
ante-room and dining-room, was hung with an old
salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border, the manufacture
of Reveillon, no doubt; the holes and spots had been carefully
touched over with wafers. Prints representing the battles of
Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with the gilding rubbed off were
symmetrically arranged on the walls. In the middle stood a massive
mahogany table, old-fashioned in shape, and worn at the edges. A
small stove, whose thin straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood
in front of the chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a
cupboard. By a strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of
former splendor; they were of carved mahogany, but the red
morocco seats, the gilt nails and reeded backs, showed as many
scars as an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard.

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