The chamber was one of those which, to this day octogenarian porters of old chateaus point out to visitors as “the state bedroom where Louis XIII. once slept.”  Fine pictures, mostly brown in tone, were framed in walnut, the delicate carvings of which were blackened by time.  The rafters of the ceiling formed compartments adorned with arabesques in the style of the preceding century, which preserved the colors of the chestnut wood.  These decorations, severe in tone, reflected the light so little that it was difficult to see their designs, even when the sun shone full into that long and wide and lofty chamber.  The silver lamp, placed upon the mantel of the vast fireplace, lighted the room so feebly that its quivering gleam could be compared only to the nebulous stars which appear at moments through the dun gray clouds of an autumn night.  The fantastic figures crowded on the marble of the fireplace, which was opposite to the bed, were so grotesquely hideous that she dared not fix her eyes upon them, fearing to see them move, or to hear a startling laugh from their gaping and twisted mouths.

At this moment a tempest was growling in the chimney, giving to every puff of wind a lugubrious meaning,—­the vast size of the flute putting the hearth into such close communication with the skies above that the embers upon it had a sort of respiration; they sparkled and went out at the will of the wind.  The arms of the family of Herouville, carved in white marble with their mantle and supporters, gave the appearance of a tomb to this species of edifice, which formed a pendant to the bed, another erection raised to the glory of Hymen.  Modern architects would have been puzzled to decide whether the room had been built for the bed or the bed for the room.  Two cupids playing on the walnut headboard, wreathed with garlands, might have passed for angels; and columns of the same wood, supporting the tester were carved with mythological allegories, the explanation of which could have been found either in the Bible or Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Take away the bed, and the same tester would have served in a church for the canopy of the pulpit or the seats of the wardens.  The married pair mounted by three steps to this sumptuous couch, which stood upon a platform and was hung with curtains of green silk covered with brilliant designs called “ramages”—­possibly because the birds of gay plumage there depicted were supposed to sing.  The folds of these immense curtains were so stiff that in the semi-darkness they might have been taken for some metal fabric.  On the green velvet hanging, adorned with gold fringes, which covered the foot of this lordly couch the superstition of the Comtes d’Herouville had affixed a large crucifix, on which their chaplain placed a fresh branch of sacred box when he renewed at Easter the holy water in the basin at the foot of the cross.

On one side of the fireplace stood a large box or wardrobe of choice woods magnificently carved, such as brides receive even now in the provinces on their wedding day.  These old chests, now so much in request by antiquaries, were the arsenals from which women drew the rich and elegant treasures of their personal adornment,—­laces, bodices, high collars and ruffs, gowns of price, alms-purses, masks, gloves, veils,—­in fact all the inventions of coquetry in the sixteenth century.