It was a little entrance that seemed never to have been opened since
the house was built, so entirely was it covered with dust and dirt; but
the well-oiled hinges and locks announced a frequent and mysterious
employment. This door laughed at the concierge, from whose vigilance
and jurisdiction it escaped, opening, like the door in the "Arabian Nights," the "Open Sesame" of Ali Baba, by a cabalistic word or a concerted tap without from the sweetest voices or whitest fingers in the world.
At the end of a long corridor, with which the door communicated, and which formed the antechamber, was, on the right, Albert's break fast-room, looking into the court, and on the left the salon, looking into the garden. Shrubs and creeping plants covered, fan-like, the windows, and hid from the garden and court these two apartments, the only rooms into which, as they were on the ground-floor, prying eyes could penetrate.
On the first floor were the same rooms, with the addition of a third, the antechamber; these three rooms were a salon, a boudoir, and a bedroom. The salon downstairs was only an Algerian divan, for the use of smokers. The boudoir upstairs communicated with the bed chamber, and by an invisible door with the staircase; it was evident every precaution had been taken. Above this floor was a large studio, which had been increased in size by pulling down the partitions: a pandemonium, in which the artist and the dandy strove for preeminence.
There were collected and piled up all Albert's successive caprices, hunting-horns, bass-viols, flutes—a whole orchestra, for Albert had had not a taste but a fancy for music; easels, palettes, brushes, pencils—for music had been succeeded by painting; foils, boxing-gloves, broad swords, and single-sticks—for, following the example of the fashion able young men of the time, Albert de Morcerf cultivated, with far more perseverance than music and drawing, the three arts that complete a dandy's education, i. e., fencing, boxing, and single-stick; and it was in this apartment that he received Grisier, Cook, and Charles Lecour.
The rest of the furniture of this privileged apartment consisted of old cabinets of the time of Francis I.; cabinets filled with China and Japan vases, faĭences of Lucca de la Robbia, plates of Bernard de Palissy; old arm-chairs, in which had perhaps reposed themselves Henry IV. or Sully, Louis XIII. or Richelieu for two of these arm chairs, adorned with a carved shield, on which were engraved the fleur-de-lis of France on an azure field, evidently came from the Louvre, or, at least, some royal residence.
On these dark and somber chairs were thrown splendid stuffs of bright colors, dyed beneath Persia's sun, or woven by the fingers of the women of Calcutta or of Chandernagor. What these stuffs did there, it
