of steps which is mounted every day by so many trembling ambitions, so
many anxieties on hesitating feet.

From the very antechamber, lofty and resonant like a church, which,
although calorifers burned night and day, possessed two great wood-fires
that filled it with a radiant life, the luxury of this interior reached
you by warm and heady puffs. It suggested at once a hot-house and
a Turkish bath. A great deal of heat and yet brightness; white
wainscoting, white marbles, immense windows, nothing stifling or shut
in, and yet a uniform atmosphere meet for the surrounding of some
rare existence, refined and nervous. Jenkins always expanded in this
factitious sun of wealth; he greeted with a "good-morning, my lads,"
the powdered porter, with his wide golden scarf, the footmen in
knee-breeches and livery of gold and blue, all standing to do him
honour; lightly drew his finger across the bars of the large cages of
monkeys full of sharp cries and capers, and, whistling under his breath,
stepped quickly up the staircase of shining marble laid with a carpet
as thick as the turf of a lawn, which led to the apartments of the duke.
Although six months had passed since his first visit to Mora House,
the good doctor was not yet become insensible to the quite physical
impression of gaiety, of frivolity, which he received from this
dwelling.

Although you were in the abode of the first official of the Empire there
was nothing here suggestive of the work of government or its boxes
of dusty old papers. The duke had only consented to accept his high
dignitaries as Minister of State and President of the Council upon the
condition that he should not quit his private mansion; he only went
to his office for an hour or two daily, the time necessary to give the
indispensable signatures, and held his receptions in his bed-chamber.