on the threshold had a faint and dead odour, like the atmosphere of a tomb,
I shrank back trembling, and dared not venture in. Nor did my courage
altogether come back when the shutters were thrown open, and the wintry
sunlight streamed in upon dusty floors, and cobwebbed ceilings, and piles
of mysterious objects covered in a ghostly way with large white sheets,
looking like heaps of slain upon a funeral pyre.

The slain, however, turned out to be the very things of which we were in
search; old-fashioned furniture in all kinds of incongruous styles, and of
all epochs--Louis Quatorze cabinets in cracked tortoise-shell and blackened
buhl--antique carved chairs emblazoned elaborately with coats of arms, as
old as the time of Albert Duerer--slender-legged tables in battered
marqueterie--time-pieces in lack-lustre ormolu, still pointing to the hour
at which they had stopped, who could tell how many years ago? bundles of
moth-eaten tapestries and faded silken hangings--exquisite oval mirrors
framed in chipped wreaths of delicate Dresden china--mouldering old
portraits of dead-and-gone court beauties in powder and patches, warriors
in wigs, and prelates in point-lace--whole suites of furniture in old
stamped leather and worm-eaten Utrecht velvet; broken toilette services in
pink and blue Sevres; screens, wardrobes, cornices--in short, all kinds of
luxurious lumber going fast to dust, like those who once upon a time
enjoyed and owned it.

And now, going from room to room, we chose a chair here, a table there, and
so on, till we had enough to furnish a bedroom and sitting-room.

"He must have a writing-table," said my father, thoughtfully, "and a
book-case."

Saying which, he stopped in front of a ricketty-looking gilded cabinet with