“Il ne manquait plus que cela!”
Yet one looks back on it all with a kind of tenderness. It was all so picturesque! What a dwelling might have been made of that antique castle by anyone who had the money and the art to spend it!
But, alas!... In the great stone bedchambers where we lodged there were blinds with Swiss scenes depicted in the most vivid colours: a mountain maiden and a Mont Blanc, and a torrent upon each.... Incongruity could go no farther—except perhaps in the billiard-room, which had been done up by the Principe and was always shown off with great pomp. It was a splendid vaulted apartment, dating from the Barbarossa period; there were four deep niches hewn out of the stone: well, in two of these were placed large Chinese Mandarins, with heads that nodded if anyone could reach high enough to set them going; and, in the other two were plaster statues of the worst garden description: Flora with a basket, Ceres with a lumpy sheaf!
AUTUMN
