bustle of buying furniture and fittings, the source of so much
pleasure and of so many associations to most young women, because he
was rather ashamed of depriving her of his company more often than the
usages of early married life require. As soon as his work was fairly
under way, he gladly allowed his wife to tempt him out of his study to
consider the effect of furniture or hangings, which he had before only
seen piecemeal or unfinished.

If the old adage is true that says a woman may be judged of from her
front door, her rooms must express her mind with even greater
fidelity. Madame de Granville had perhaps stamped the various things
she had ordered with the seal of her own character; the young lawyer
was certainly startled by the cold, arid solemnity that reigned in
these rooms; he found nothing to charm his taste; everything was
discordant, nothing gratified the eye. The rigid mannerism that
prevailed in the sitting-room at Bayeux had invaded his home; the
broad panels were hollowed in circles, and decorated with those
arabesques of which the long, monotonous mouldings are in such bad
taste. Anxious to find excuses for his wife, the young husband began
again, looking first at the long and lofty ante-room through which the
apartment was entered. The color of the panels, as ordered by his
wife, was too heavy, and the very dark green velvet used to cover the
benches added to the gloom of this entrance--not, to be sure, an
important room, but giving a first impression--just as we measure a
man's intelligence by his first address. An ante-room is a kind of
preface which announces what is to follow, but promises nothing.

The young husband wondered whether his wife could really have chosen
the lamp of an antique pattern, which hung in the centre of this bare
hall, the pavement of black and white marble, and the paper in