the furniture was covered with fine needlework tapestry illustrating
La Fontaine's fables, and Jeanne was delighted at finding a chair she
had loved as a child, which pictured the story of "The Fox and the
Stork."

Beside the drawing-room were the library, full of old books, and two
unused rooms; at the left was the dining-room, the laundry, the
kitchen, etc.

A corridor divided the whole first floor, the doors of ten rooms
opening into it. At the end, on the right, was Jeanne's room. She and
her father went in. He had had it all newly done over, using the
furniture and draperies that had been in the storeroom.

There were some very old Flemish tapestries, with their peculiar
looking figures. At sight of her bed, the young girl uttered a scream
of joy. Four large birds carved in oak, black from age and highly
polished, bore up the bed and seemed to be its protectors. On the
sides were carved two wide garlands of flowers and fruit, and four
finely fluted columns, terminating in Corinthian capitals, supported a
cornice of cupids with roses intertwined. The tester and the coverlet
were of antique blue silk, embroidered in gold fleur de lys. When
Jeanne had sufficiently admired it, she lifted up the candle to
examine the tapestries and the allegories they represented. They were
mostly conventional subjects, but the last hanging represented a
drama. Near a rabbit, which was still nibbling, a young man lay
stretched out, apparently dead. A young girl, gazing at him, was
plunging a sword into her bosom, and the fruit of the tree had turned
black. Jeanne gave up trying to divine the meaning underlying this
picture, when she saw in the corner a tiny little animal which the