moulding. This anachronism, to which the family is indifferent, would
grieve a poet. On the mantel-shelf, covered with red velvet, is a tall
clock of tortoise-shell inlaid with brass, flanked on each side with a
silver candelabrum of singular design. A large square table, with
solid legs, fills the centre of this room; the chairs are of turned
wood covered with tapestry. On a round table supported by a single leg
made in the shape of a vine-shoot, which stands before a window
looking into the garden, is a lamp of an odd kind. This lamp has a
common glass globe, about the size of an ostrich egg, which is
fastened into a candle-stick by a glass tube. Through a hole at the
top of the globe issues a wick which passes through a sort of reed of
brass, drawing the nut-oil held in the globe through its own length
coiled like a tape-worm in a surgeon's phial. The windows which look
into the garden, like those that look upon the court-yard, are
mullioned in stone with hexagonal leaded panes, and are draped by
curtains, with heavy valances and stout cords, of an ancient stuff of
crimson silk with gold reflections, called in former days either
brocatelle or small brocade.

On each of the two upper stories of the house there are but two rooms.
The first is the bedroom of the head of the family, the second is that
of the children. Guests were lodged in chambers beneath the roof. The
servants slept above the kitchens and stables. The pointed roof,
protected with lead at its angles and edges, has a noble pointed
window on each side, one looking down upon the court-yard, the other
on the garden. These windows, rising almost to the level of the roof,
have slender, delicate casings, the carvings of which have crumbled
under the salty vapors of the atmosphere. Above the arch of each
window with its crossbars of stone, still grinds, as it turns, the
vane of a noble.