several of the more recent portraits of the family,--one or two by
Rigaud, and three pastels by Latour. Four card tables, a backgammon
board, and a piquet table occupied the vast room, the only one in the
house, by the bye, which was ceiled.

The dining-room, paved in black and white stone, not ceiled, and its
beams painted, was furnished with one of those enormous sideboards
with marble tops, required by the war waged in the provinces against
the human stomach. The walls, painted in fresco, represented a flowery
trellis. The seats were of varnished cane, and the doors of natural
wood. All things about the place carried out the patriarchal air which
emanated from the inside as well as the outside of the house. The
genius of the provinces preserved everything; nothing was new or old,
neither young nor decrepit. A cold precision made itself felt
throughout.

Tourists in Normandy, Brittany, Maine, and Anjou must all have seen in
the capitals of those provinces many houses which resemble more or
less that of the Cormons; for it is, in its way, an archetype of the
burgher houses in that region of France, and it deserves a place in
this history because it serves to explain manners and customs, and
represents ideas. Who does not already feel that life must have been
calm and monotonously regular in this old edifice? It contained a
library; but that was placed below the level of the river. The books
were well bound and shelved, and the dust, far from injuring them,
only made them valuable. They were preserved with the care given in
these provinces deprived of vineyards to other native products,
desirable for their antique perfume, and issued by the presses of
Bourgogne, Touraine, Gascogne, and the South. The cost of
transportation was too great to allow any but the best products to be