the table, those metal lamps, that wretched paper with its red border,
those execrable engravings, and the calico curtains with red fringes,
in a dining-room, where the friends of Petitot once feasted! Do you
notice the effect produced in the salon by those portraits of Monsieur
and Madame and Mademoiselle Thuillier by Pierre Grassou, the artist
par excellence of the modern bourgeoisie. Have you remarked the
card-tables and the consoles of the Empire, the tea-table supported by
a lyre, and that species of sofa, of gnarled mahogany, covered in
painted velvet of a chocolate tone? On the chimney-piece, with the
clock (representing the Bellona of the Empire), are candelabra with
fluted columns. Curtains of woollen damask, with under-curtains of
embroidered muslin held back by stamped brass holders, drape the
windows. On the floor a cheap carpet. The handsome vestibule has
wooden benches, covered with velvet, and the panelled walls with their
fine carvings are mostly hidden by wardrobes, brought there from time
to time from the bedrooms occupied by the Thuilliers. Fear, that
hideous divinity, has caused the family to add sheet-iron doors on the
garden side and on the courtyard side, which are folded back against
the walls in the daytime, and are closed at night.

It is easy to explain the deplorable profanation practised on this
monument of the private life of the bourgeoisie of the seventeenth
century, by the private life of the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth. At
the beginning of the Consulate, let us say, some master-mason having
bought the ancient building, took the idea of turning to account the
ground which lay between it and the street. He probably pulled down
the fine porte-cochere or entrance gate, flanked by little lodges
which guarded the charming "sejour" (to use a word of the olden time),
and proceeded, with the industry of a Parisian proprietor, to impress
his withering mark on the elegance of the old building. What a curious