damask cloth that is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service,
and porcelain of exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles,
where miracles of cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats
of arms, you must, to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of
the houses, and the grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets,
grisettes, umbrellas, and overshoes to men who pay for their dinners
with tickets; and you must also comprehend Love to be a principle
which develops in all its grace only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath
the opal gleams of an alabaster lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung,
before gilded hearths in chambers deadened to all outward sounds by
shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors must be there to show the play
of form and repeat the woman we would multiply as love itself
multiplies and magnifies her; next low divans, and a bed which, like a
secret, is divined, not shown. In this coquettish chamber are
fur-lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles under glass with
muslin draperies, by which to read at all hours of the night, and
flowers, not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the fineness of
which might have satisfied Anne of Austria.

Madame Jules had realized this charming programme, but that was
nothing. All women of taste can do as much, though there is always in
the arrangement of these details a stamp of personality which gives to
this decoration or that detail a character that cannot be imitated.
To-day, more than ever, reigns the fanaticism of individuality. The
more our laws tend to an impossible equality, the more we shall get
away from it in our manners and customs. Thus, rich people are
beginning, in France, to become more exclusive in their tastes and
their belongings, than they have been for the last thirty years.
Madame Jules knew very well how to carry out this programme; and
everything about her was arranged in harmony with a luxury that suits