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Madame Napoleon and her husband are both certainly under much obligation to this nobleman for his care to procure them comparatively decent persons to decorate their levees and drawing-rooms, who, though they have no claim either to morality or virtue, either to honour or chastity, are undoubtedly a great acquisition at the Court of St.
She entertained most luxuriantly, and spent enormous sums upon her toilet, changed the costly livery of her numerous retinue of servants every month, as well as the furniture of the drawing-rooms; and presented with generous liberality her superfluous ornaments, dresses, and furniture to her dear high-born friends, who greedily accepted them, and were overflowing in their tender protestations and gratitude, whilst they in secret revolted at the presumption of the arrogant woman, who permitted herself to send them her cast-off things.
If this predominance of English fashions had been confined to filling our drawing-rooms with young men in English frock-coats, instead of the French dress, good taste and commerce might alone have suffered; but the principles of English government had taken possession of these young heads.
I was soon to learn. I felt the chill invisible presence near me; and the voice said, “Search!” The room belonged to the common representative class of back drawing-rooms in “apartments” of the better kind. The only one unfamiliar piece of furniture was an old Indian cabinet; and my eye naturally fell on that.
In her drawing-rooms she brought together, at brilliant entertainments, the old aristocracy and the new nobility of Holland, and taught the stiff society of that country the fine, unconstrained tone, and the vivacious intellectual conversation of Parisian society.
I cannot help smiling when I think of some of the so-called Japanese drawing-rooms, overcrowded with knick-knacks and curios and hung with coarse gold embroideries on exported satins, of our Parisian fine ladies. I would advise those persons to come and look at the houses of people of taste out here; to visit the white solitudes of the palaces at Yeddo.
In those halcyon days, the drawing-rooms were hung with gilded leather, and, I dare say, cut a good figure, for they were really spacious rooms. The bedrooms were wainscoted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its sombre associations.
"What an odd little old man!" said Longueville to himself. "He is so jolly and hale; but though he wishes to seem a good fellow, I will not trust him too far." Next day, at about four o'clock, when the house party were dispersed in the drawing-rooms and billiard-room, a servant announced to the inhabitants of the Villa Planat, "Monsieur DE Longueville."
Thelma's delight in her new abode was unbounded the stately oaks that surrounded it, the rose-gardens, the conservatories, the grand rooms, with their fine tapestries, oak furniture, and rare pictures, the splendid library, the long, lofty drawing-rooms, furnished and decorated after the style of Louis Quinze, all filled her with a tender pride and wistful admiration.
She was sitting opposite to him, her powerful loosely-gloved hands crossed over the rich velvet of her dress, her fair large face and grayish hair surmounted by a mighty cap, as vigorous, shrewd, and individual a type of English middle age as could be found. The room behind her and the second and third drawing-rooms were brilliantly lighted. Mr.
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