“Dinner was served in a set of white-and-gold china; the dessert service is bright blue with green sprigs; but they opened the china closet to show us that they had another service of stoneware for everyday use. The linen is in large cupboards facing the sideboards. Everything is varnished, shining, new, and harsh in color. Still, I could accept the dining-room; it has a character of its own which, though not pleasing, is fairly representative of that of the owners; but there is no enduring the five engravings—those black-and-white things against which the Minister of the Interior ought really to get a decree; they represent Poniatowski leaping into the Elster, the Defence of the Barrière de Clichy, Napoleon himself pointing a gun, and two prints of Mazeppa, all in gilt frames of a vulgar pattern suitable to the prints, which are enough to make one loathe popularity. Oh! how much I prefer Madame Julliard’s pastels representing fruits, those capital pastels which were done in the time of Louis XV, and which harmonize with the nice old dining-room and its dark, rather worm-eaten panels, which are at least characteristic of the country, and suit the heavy family silver, the antique china, and all our habits. The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris. You may perhaps retort, ‘Vous êtes orfévre, Monsieur Josse!’—‘You are to the manner born.’ But I prefer this old room of my father-in-law Tiphaine’s, with its heavy curtains of green-and-white damask, its Louis XV chimneypiece, its scroll pattern pier glass, its old beaded mirrors and time-honored card-tables; my jars of old Sèvres, old blue, mounted in old gilding; my clock with its impossible flowers, my out-of-date chandelier, and my tapestried furniture, to all the splendor of their drawing-room.”
“What is it like?” said Monsieur Martner, delighted with the praise of the country so ingeniously brought in by the pretty Parisenne.
“The drawing-room is a fine red—as red as Mademoiselle Sylvie when she is angry at losing a misère.”
“Sylvie-red,” said the President, and the word took its place in the vocabulary of the district.
“The window-curtains—red! the furniture—red! the chimneypiece—red marble veined with yellow! the candelabra and dock—red marble veined with yellow, and mounted in a heavy vulgar style; Roman lamp-brackets supported on Greek foliage! From the top of the clock a lion stares down on you, stupidly, as the Rogrons stare; a great good-natured lion, the ornamental lion so called, which will long continue to dethrone real lions; he spends his life clutching a black ball exactly like a deputy of the left. Perhaps it is a Constitutional allegory. The dial of this clock is an extraordinary piece of work.
“The chimney glass is framed with appliqué ornaments, which look poor and cheap, though they are a novelty. But the upholsterer’s genius shines most in a panel of red stuff of which the radiating folds all centre in a rosette in the middle of the chimney-board—a romantic poem composed expressly for the Rogrons, who display it with ecstasy. From the ceiling hangs a chandelier, carefully wrapped in a green cotton shroud, and with reason; it is in the very worst taste, raw-toned bronze, with even more detestable tendrils of brown gold. Under it a round tea-table of marble, with more yellow than ever in the red, displays a shining metal tray, on which glitter cups of painted china—such painting!—arranged round a cut-glass sugar-basin, so bold in style that our grandchildren will open their eyes in amazement at the gilt rings round the edge and the diamond pattern on the sides, like a medieval quilted doublet, and at the tongs for taking the sugar, which probably no one will ever use.
“This room is papered with red flock-paper imitating velvet, divided into panels by a beading of gilt brass, finished at the corners with enormous palms. A chromo-lithograph hangs on each panel, framed most elaborately in plaster casting of garlands to imitate fine woodcarving. The furniture of elm-root, upholstered with satin-cloth, classically consists of two sofas, two large easy-chairs, six armchairs, and six light chairs. The console is graced by an alabaster vase, called à la Medicis, under a glass shade, and by the much-talked-of liqueur-case. We were told often enough that ‘there is not such another in Provins.’ In each window bay, hung with splendid red silk curtains and lace curtains besides, stands a card-table. The carpet is Aubusson; the Rogrons have not failed to get hold of the crimson ground with medallions of flowers, the vulgarest of all the common patterns.
“The room looks uninhabited; there are no books or prints—none of the little things that furnish a table,” and she looked at her own table covered with fashionable trifles, albums, and the pretty toys that were given her. “There are no flowers, none of the little nothings that fade and are renewed. It is all as cold and dry as Mademoiselle Sylvie. Buffon is right in saying that the style is the man, and certainly drawing-rooms have a style!”
Pretty Madame Tiphaine went on with her description by epigrams; and from this specimen, it is easy to imagine the rooms in which the brother and sister really lived on the first floor, which they also displayed to their guests. Still, no one could conceive of the foolish expenses into which the cunning builder had dragged the Rogrons; the mouldings of the doors, the elaborate
