As we had only the next day for boxing and shipping, there was no alternative.  Before we had even taken in our grotesque appearance, the horse was galloping, as only a Paris cab horse can gallop, toward our abode in Avenue Henri Martin, past carriages and autos returning from the Bois, while inside the cab we sat, elated by our success and in that whirl of triumphant absorbing joy which only the real collector knows.

This same modest little Empire collection had a treasure recently added to it, found by chance, in an antique shop in Pennsylvania.  It was a mirror.  The dealer, an Italian, said that he had got it from an old house in Bordentown, New Jersey.

“It’s genuine English,” he said, certain he was playing his winning card.

It has the original glass and a heavy, squarely made, mahogany frame.  Strange to say it corresponds exactly with the bed and bureau in the collection, having pilasters surmounted by women’s heads of gilded wood with small gilded feet showing at base.

PLATE XXXI

An end of a room containing genuine Empire furniture, Empire ornaments and a rare collection of Empire cups, which appear in a vitrine seen near the dull-blue brocade curtains drawn over windows.

We would especially call attention to the mantelpiece, which was originally the Empire frame of a mirror, and to a book shelf made interesting by having the upper shelf supported by a charming pair of antique bronze cupids.

     This plate is reproduced to show as many Empire pieces as
     possible; it is not an ideal example of arrangement, either as to
     furniture in room or certain details.  There is too much crowding.

[Illustration:  A Collection of Empire Furniture, Ornaments and China]

As the brother of the great Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain and Rome, passed many years of his self-imposed exile in Bordentown, in a house made beautiful with furnishings he brought from France, it is possible this old mirror has an interesting story, if only it could talk!  Then, too, it was Bordentown that sheltered a Prince Murat, the relative of Joseph Bonaparte.  If it was he who conveyed our mirror to these shores, a very different, but as highly romantic a tale might unfold!

For fear the precious ancient glass should be broken or the frame destroyed, we bribed a Pullman-car porter to let us bring its six by four feet of antiquity with us, in the train!

When you see a find always take it with you, or the next man may, and above all, always be on the lookout.

It was from a French novel by one of the living French writers that we first got a clue to a certain obscure Etruscan museum, hidden away in the Carrara Mountains, in Italy.  That wonderful little museum and its adjacent potteries, which cover the face of Italy like ant-hills, are to-day contributors to innumerable beautiful interiors in every part of America.