My uncle had smiled as he said this, but the other's face was most serious. As I eyed him closely his countenance looked more like a ball of tightly wound twine with ears and features than anything else I could imagine. I had never seen such a mesh of wrinkles, or imagined that age could stamp itself so wonderfully. That the old man was not decrepit, however, was evident from the deft way in which he unsaddled the little horse and threw the trappings over his shoulder.
Now my uncle turned to me again. "Welcome, my son," he said. "Consider all here as yours entirely."
He ushered me through the doorway. I could scarce control an expression of my astonishment as I looked about. Immediately facing the light I saw something that caused me to start suddenly. It was the figure of a man in flowing satins and velvets; great heavy curls fell over his shoulders, and torrents of lace poured at his wristbands and knees. He had on high red-heeled shoes, fronted by wide bows, and his slender bejewelled hand rested on the top of a tall walking-stick.
It took me a second glance to perceive that it was but a portrait that extended from the floor to ceiling, and was merely nailed, without framing, against the wall. A rough table made of pine boards but covered with a handsome cloth was in the centre of the room. It was heaped high with books in embossed leather covers. Tacked about the walls were many portraits of times long since. One especially, before which I drew a long breath, dumfounded me (it was so like my mother). But Monsieur de Brienne had gathered me by the elbow, as it were, and marched me around.
The portrait whose resemblance had struck me so vividly he told me was my grandmother, and then went on, stopping before each, "Your great-grandfather, your great-uncle, your aunt," and so forth and so forth.
One might have thought that I was being introduced in person to all my ancestors and past family. In fact, I found myself bowing as if it were expected of me.
After a few minutes I had a chance to look about me. There were but four rooms on the ground-floor of the little house and three above; and if the furniture of Marshwood had been an odd assortment, that of Belair was odder still. I had noticed, as I have said, that the portraits were not in frames. They had evidently been brought from their former residence rolled in some shape or other for convenience. Many of them showed traces of rough handling, and were much cracked and soiled.
My uncle slept on the first floor in a great four-poster bed hung about with heavy curtains of embroidered silk, but the rest of the ameublement, was made up of clumsy wooden benches and stools, not the workmanship of a joiner, but clearly made by unskilled hands.
The room upstairs to which I was shown contained nothing but a mattress stuffed with cornhusks, and a beautiful painted landscape (which comparing with some that I have since seen must have been nothing less than a Claude, I dare say). A bench on which stood an ebony cross, and a large brass blunderbuss that hung from a nail over the door, were all the other things in the room.
At dinner that night we were waited upon by the great wizzened-faced servant, and my uncle, who was taken with a sleepy, tongue-tied mood, had attired himself in such a brilliantly faded costume that he resembled nothing less than one of the pictures that looked down at us.