large for her that it gave her face a ridiculously diminutive
expression. When I had first seen her, she was attired, most
becomingly, in deep mourning. There was an air of oddity, in short,
about the dress of the whole party, which, at first, caused me to
recur to my original idea of the "soothing system," and to fancy that
Monsieur Maillard had been willing to deceive me until after dinner,
that I might experience no uncomfortable feelings during the repast,
at finding myself dining with lunatics; but I remembered having been
informed, in Paris, that the southern provincialists were a
peculiarly eccentric people, with a vast number of antiquated
notions; and then, too, upon conversing with several members of the
company, my apprehensions were immediately and fully dispelled.

The dining-room itself, although perhaps sufficiently comfortable and
of good dimensions, had nothing too much of elegance about it. For
example, the floor was uncarpeted; in France, however, a carpet is
frequently dispensed with. The windows, too, were without curtains;
the shutters, being shut, were securely fastened with iron bars,
applied diagonally, after the fashion of our ordinary shop-shutters.
The apartment, I observed, formed, in itself, a wing of the chateau,
and thus the windows were on three sides of the parallelogram, the
door being at the other. There were no less than ten windows in all.

The table was superbly set out. It was loaded with plate, and more
than loaded with delicacies. The profusion was absolutely barbaric.
There were meats enough to have feasted the Anakim. Never, in all my
life, had I witnessed so lavish, so wasteful an expenditure of the
good things of life. There seemed very little taste, however, in the
arrangements; and my eyes, accustomed to quiet lights, were sadly
offended by the prodigious glare of a multitude of wax candles,