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Updated: June 1, 2025
M. de Vivonne soundly rated me for such cowardice, as he called it, while Madame de Maintenon offered me her curate-in-chief, or else the Abbe Gobelin.
Divans and chairs, cabinets and tables carried the mind far away to the realm of emperors and kings; vases from China and Greece stood on stands of boule-work; a tall ebony-and-ivory clock-case, in which ticked sonorously a masterpiece of Peter Hele, stood between two gorgeous pieces of Gobelin tapestry.
Ever since Russia had pretensions to being a civilised power its rulers have always been inclined to pay more attention to the ornamental than the useful to the varnish rather than the framework of civilisation and we need not therefore be surprised to find that long before the native industry could supply the materials required for the ordinary wants of humble life, attempts were made to produce such things as Gobelin tapestries.
Globe-lamps, burning at the walls, cast a hazy half-light, in which glittered, here and there, golden gleams, and appeared the features of painted faces and landscapes. From shady corners emerged, partially, the forms of slender and swelling vases; portions of white garlands on the walls; the delicate mists of dim colors on Gobelin tapestry; the bright scarlet and blue of silk drapery.
At the great hunting exposition recently held at Vienna the clou of the display was a French royal hunting-lodge in the style of Louis XVI, hung with veritable Gobelin tapestries, loaned by the French government and picturing "The Hunt in France." It was called by the critics a unique painting in a beautiful frame.
Berenice, whose presence of mind never forsook her, and whose quickness increased with the occasion, recollected that the unfinished picture-gallery, which had been built behind the house, adjoining to the back drawing-room, had no window opening to the street: it was lighted by a sky-light; it had no communication with any of the apartments in the house, except with the back drawing-room, into which it was intended to open by large glass doors; but fortunately these were not finished, and, at this time, there was no access to the picture-gallery but by a concealed door behind the gobelin tapestry of the back drawing-room an entrance which could hardly be discovered by any stranger.
There had been sent from the storehouse of the crown a large quantity of magnificent furniture, carpets and tapestry, both Gobelin and la Savonnerie; bronzes, lusters, candelabras, girondoles, Sevres china; in fine, everything which could contribute to the luxurious furnishing of the two Imperial palaces, and those which were to be occupied by the other sovereigns; and a crowd of workmen came from Paris.
The office of lighting the vast room was assigned to a dozen wax candles in a silver candelabrum, but they were so inadequate to the task that neither the mythological scenes on the Brabant Gobelin curtains with which the walls were hung, nor the very scanty furniture of the remainder of the long chamber could be seen from the door.
He followed, without a word, by the marble faun, through the lifted curtains, and into the presence of Olympia, who was walking up and down the Gobelin carpet, with the light of a Venetian chandelier falling over her. She was becoming impatient for the arrival of her guests.
It is a large stone building, rather imposing in its exterior, and within is divided into roomy vestibules, picture-galleries, banqueting hall, hall of justice, hall of council, chapel, and several other state apartments. The council chamber is hung in Gobelin tapestry of great original cost and beauty, imported from France nearly three centuries ago.
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