He caught at all delights, at all sorrows; grasped at existence in
every form; and endowed the phantoms conjured up from that inert and
plastic material so liberally with his own life and feelings, that the
sound of his own footsteps reached him as if from another world, or as
the hum of Paris reaches the towers of Notre Dame.

He ascended the inner staircase which led to the first floor, with its
votive shields, panoplies, carved shrines, and figures on the wall at
every step. Haunted by the strangest shapes, by marvelous creations
belonging to the borderland betwixt life and death, he walked as if
under the spell of a dream. His own existence became a matter of doubt
to him; he was neither wholly alive nor dead, like the curious objects
about him. The light began to fade as he reached the show-rooms, but
the treasures of gold and silver heaped up there scarcely seemed to
need illumination from without. The most extravagant whims of
prodigals, who have run through millions to perish in garrets, had
left their traces here in this vast bazar of human follies. Here,
beside a writing desk, made at the cost of 100,000 francs, and sold
for a hundred pence, lay a lock with a secret worth a king's ransom.
The human race was revealed in all the grandeur of its wretchedness;
in all the splendor of its infinite littleness. An ebony table that an
artist might worship, carved after Jean Goujon's designs, in years of
toil, had been purchased perhaps at the price of firewood. Precious
caskets, and things that fairy hands might have fashioned, lay there
in heaps like rubbish.

"You must have the worth of millions here!" cried the young man as he
entered the last of an immense suite of rooms, all decorated and gilt
by eighteenth century artists.