“Mamma told me only to stay two weeks because of Madame Moreau.”

“Oh! we’ll see about that,” replied Moreau, rather wounded that his conjugal authority was doubted.

Moreau’s youngest son, an active, strapping lad of twelve, here ran up.

“Come,” said his father, “take Oscar to your mother.”

He himself went rapidly along the shortest path to the gamekeeper’s house, which was situated between the park and the forest.

The pavilion, or lodge, in which the count had established his steward, was built a few years before the Revolution.  It stood in the centre of a large garden, one wall of which adjoined the court-yard of the stables and offices of the chateau itself.  Formerly its chief entrance was on the main road to the village.  But after the count’s father bought the building, he closed that entrance and united the place with his own property.

The house, built of freestone, in the style of the period of Louis XV. (it is enough to say that its exterior decoration consisted of a stone drapery beneath the windows, as in the colonnades of the Place Louis XV., the flutings of which were stiff and ungainly), had on the ground-floor a fine salon opening into a bedroom, and a dining-room connected with a billiard-room.  These rooms, lying parallel to one another, were separated by a staircase, in front of which was a sort of peristyle which formed an entrance-hall, on which the two suits of rooms on either side opened.  The kitchen was beneath the dining-room, for the whole building was raised ten steps from the ground level.

By placing her own bedroom on the first floor above the ground-floor, Madame Moreau was able to transform the chamber adjoining the salon into a boudoir.  These two rooms were richly furnished with beautiful pieces culled from the rare old furniture of the chateau.  The salon, hung with blue and white damask, formerly the curtains of the state-bed, was draped with ample portieres and window curtains lined with white silk.  Pictures, evidently from old panels, plant-stands, various pretty articles of modern upholstery, handsome lamps, and a rare old cut-glass chandelier, gave a grandiose appearance to the room.  The carpet was a Persian rug.  The boudoir, wholly modern, and furnished entirely after Madame Moreau’s own taste, was arranged in imitation of a tent, with ropes of blue silk on a gray background.  The classic divan was there, of course, with its pillows and footstools.  The plant-stands, taken care of by the head-gardener of Presles, rejoiced the eye with their pyramids of bloom.  The dining-room and billiard-room were furnished in mahogany.

Around the house the steward’s wife had laid out a beautiful garden, carefully cultivated, which opened into the great park.  Groups of choice parks hid the offices and stables.  To improve the entrance by which visitors came to see her, she had substituted a handsome iron gateway for the shabby railing, which she discarded.