The room was close and dark, filled with the smoke from a defective
chimney.

A tiny boudoir, once the dainty sanctum of imperious Marie
Antoinette; a faint and ghostly odour, like unto the perfume of
spectres, seemed still to cling to the stained walls, and to the torn
Gobelin tapestries.

Everywhere lay the impress of a heavy and destroying hand: that of
the great and glorious Revolution.

In the mud-soiled corners of the room a few chairs, with brocaded
cushions rudely torn, leant broken and desolate against the walls. A
small footstool, once gilt-legged and satin-covered, had been
overturned and roughly kicked to one side, and there it lay on its
back, like some little animal that had been hurt, stretching its broken
limbs upwards, pathetic to behold.

From the delicately wrought Buhl table the silver inlay had been
harshly stripped out of its bed of shell.

Across the Lunette, painted by Boucher and representing a chaste
Diana surrounded by a bevy of nymphs, an uncouth hand had
scribbled in charcoal the device of the Revolution: Liberte, Egalite,
Fraternite ou la Mort; whilst, as if to give a crowning point to the
work of destruction and to emphasise its motto, someone had
decorated the portrait of Marie Antoinette with a scarlet cap, and