We entered by the vine-covered porch of which I have spoken.
The first room was an entrance-hall, lighted from above, and filled with pictures which appeared to be excellent copies from the best Italian masters. Some bas-reliefs and a few marble statues, antiques of a pure style, stood in the corners of the hall, and four admirable Greek vases were filled with flowers, now withered, alas! for there were flowers everywhere, and in this hall they must have marvellously suited the treasures of art.
"This is the antechamber, monsieur," said the curé.
We passed through it, and entered a room furnished with the beautiful carvings of the Renaissance; four large paintings of the Spanish school hid the tapestries on the walls, and flowers had once filled the great jardinières which stood before the windows.
All of the rooms were comparatively small, but the accessories were of the greatest elegance and in the best taste.
"This is the dining-room," said the curé, continuing his glacial nomenclature. Then we passed by an open door, only closed by portières, into a salon, whose three windows opened on to that part of the park that I had not yet seen.
The salon had a gilded frieze, and was hung with cherry-coloured satin damask. The furniture was of the best epoch of the reign of Louis XIV., and was also gilded, and several consoles of marquetry, covered with every kind of splendid porcelain, completed the ornamentation of the room.
But what pleased me above all was that this luxuriousness, which one might expect to find in a city residence, was in such a delightful contrast to the almost wild solitude of the place, especially contrasting with the grand, though pleasing, landscape which could be seen from the windows of the salon.
It was an immense prairie of the beautiful fresh green grass that I had already so much admired. Across this field meandered a clear and swiftly running river, doubtless the one I had crossed so many times before arriving at ——. On each side of the meadow extended a great curtain of oaks and of lindens, leafy and green to the very ground, while two or three groups of silvery-barked birch-trees were studded here and there over the field, where several fine Swiss cattle were peacefully grazing; finally, on the horizon overlooking several ranges of hills, one could see the cloudy and bluish crests of the mountains which form the last of the chain of the Eastern Pyrenees. The view was truly magnificent, and, as I have said, this grandiose nature, framed as it was in the satin and gold of this pretty salon, had a most singular effect on me.
"This is the salon," said the curé, and then we entered the greenhouse, which was built of rustic wood. There we saw a great number of exotic plants planted deeply in the ground, so that in winter this conservatory must have looked like a beautiful alley in a garden. There was a door at the far end of the alley, before which the curé stopped.