It represented the Judgment of Paris. That dangerous shepherd of Mount Ida was depicted in appropriate costume of brown skin, laughing eyes, a crook, and a pair of sandals, with a golden apple in his hand. Juno stood on one side—Minerva on the other. The ox-eyed goddess, with her rich colouring and radiant form, affording a glowing type of those attractions which are dependent on the senses alone; while Minerva’s deep grey eyes, serene, majestic air, and noble, thoughtful brow, seemed to promise a triumph, glorious in proportion to the wisdom and intellect to be overcome.
Paris stood between them, somewhat in front of the immortal rivals, his right arm skilfully foreshortened, and offering the apple—to whom? To neither of these, but to the Marquise, as she got out of bed every morning; thereby inferring that she was the Olympian Venus, the Queen of Love and Beauty both for gods and men!
Malletort, in his many visits to the Hôtel Montmirail, never passed this picture without a characteristic grin of intense amusement and delight.
Traversing the bed-chamber, one arrived at last in a small apartment which concluded the series, and from which there appeared no further egress, though, in truth, a door, concealed in the panelling, opened on a narrow staircase which descended to the garden. This room was more plainly furnished than the others, but an air of comfort pervaded it that denoted the owner’s favourite retreat. Its tables were littered, its furniture was worn. The pens and portfolio were disordered; a woman’s glove lay near the inkstand; some half-finished embroidery occupied the sofa; and a sheet of blotted music had fallen on the floor. There was no kind of mirror in any part of the apartment. It was an affectation of the Marquise, pardonable enough in a handsome woman, to protest that she hated the reflection of her own features; and this little chamber was her favourite retreat—her inner citadel, her sanctuary of seclusion—or, as the servants called it, the Boudoir of Madame.
It was undoubtedly the quietest room in the house, the farthest removed from the noise of the courtyard, the domestics, even their guests. Profound silence would have reigned in it now, but for the ring of a hooked hard beak drawn sharply at intervals across a row of gilt wires, and a ghastly muttering, like that of a demoniac, between whisper and croak, for the encouragement of somebody or something named “Pierrot.”
It was Madame’s West Indian parrot, beguiling his solitude by the conscientious study of his part. Presently the bird gave a long shrill whistle, for he heard a well-known step on the garden stair, and his mistress’s voice singing—
“Non, je te dis
Ma sœur, c’est lui,
C’est mon Henri,
A l’habit gris