At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated value to the relics of past ages.  The carved settee, the high-backed chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint Antoine.  The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of well-chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic creation.  As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in mahogany.  This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes, was heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-guns suspended on the walls.  These adornments, which cost but little, were talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of oriental luxury.  Singular to say, they, more than anything else, excited the envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed determination to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces, he reserved for himself, “in petto,” this beautiful pavilion.

On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household.  At the windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the particular taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements.  Left to herself in the decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin papers; on the mantel-shelf of her bedroom—­which was furnished in that vulgar style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are fastened—­stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant.  Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of the cook, the man-of-all-work, and La Pechina had benefited by the recent restoration.

“Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all,” said the countess, entering Madame Michaud’s bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on the stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.

Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.

“I love Michaud, madame, as you know.  Well, how would you like to have, in your own house, a rival always beside you?”

“A rival?”

“Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves Michaud without knowing it, poor thing!  The child’s conduct, long a mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days.”