But in our country, [21]
where we must needs economise not the shade but the sun, its
grandiosity weighs a little on one's spirits. Well! the rough
plaster we used to cover as well as might be with morsels of old
figured arras-work, is replaced by dainty panelling of wood, with
mimic columns, and a quite aerial scrollwork around sunken spaces of
a pale-rose stuff and certain oval openings--two over the doors,
opening on each side of the great couch which faces the windows, one
over the chimney-piece, and one above the buffet which forms its vis-
a-vis--four spaces in all, to be filled by and by with "fantasies" of
the Four Seasons, painted by his own hand. He will send us from
Paris arm-chairs of a new pattern he has devised, suitably covered,
and a painted clavecin. Our old silver candlesticks look well on the
chimney-piece. Odd, faint-coloured flowers fill coquettishly the
little empty spaces here and there, like ghosts of nosegays left by
visitors long ago, which paled thus, sympathetically, at the decease
of their old owners; for, in spite of its new-fashionedness, all this
array is really less like a new thing than the last surviving result
of all the more lightsome adornments of past times. Only, the very
walls seem to cry out:--No! to make delicate insinuation, for a
music, a conversation, nimbler than any we have known, or are likely
to find here. For himself, he converses well, but very sparingly.
He assures us, indeed, that the [22] "new style" is in truth a thing
of old days, of his own old days here in Valenciennes, when, working
long hours as a mason's boy, he in fancy reclothed the walls of this
or that house he was employed in, with this fairy arrangement--itself
like a piece of "chamber-music," methinks, part answering to part;
while no too trenchant note is allowed to break through the delicate
harmony of white and pale red and little golden touches.
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