fortunate circumstances have contributed to make this beautiful place
what it is! A mistress of Henri IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now
stands. The favorite of the Great Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom
Les Aigues was given), added a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished
the house with all the elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera
celebrity; and to him Les Aigues owes the restoration of its ground
floor in the style Louis XV.

I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the
dining-room. The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco
in the Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female
forms, in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances
corbeils of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling.
Charming paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels
between the female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,
--boar's-heads, salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which
fantastically suggest men and women and children, and rival the
whimsical imagination of the Chinese,--the people who best understand,
to my thinking at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the
house finds a bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter
only when required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no
secrets. The panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the
embrasures, both of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room
is heated from below. Every window looks forth on some delightful
view.

This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns