There is an indescribable mental headiness in the admiration we inspire, or in the effect of playing a part, which fends off criticism from reaching the idol.  An atmosphere, produced perhaps by unceasing nervous tension, forms a sort of halo, through which the world below is seen.  How otherwise can we account for the perennial good faith which leads to so many repeated presentments of the same effects, and the constant ignoring of warnings given by children, such a terror to their parents, or by husbands, so familiar as they are with the peacock airs of their wives?  Monsieur de la Baudraye had the frankness of a man who opens an umbrella at the first drop of rain.  When his wife was started on the subject of Negro emancipation or the improvement of convict prisons, he would take up his little blue cap and vanish without a sound, in the certainty of being able to get to Saint-Thibault to see off a cargo of puncheons, and return an hour later to find the discussion approaching a close.  Or, if he had no business to attend to, he would go for a walk on the Mall, whence he commanded the lovely panorama of the Loire valley, and take a draught of fresh air while his wife was performing a sonata in words, or a dialectical duet.

Once fairly established as a Superior Woman, Dinah was eager to prove her devotion to the most remarkable creations of art.  She threw herself into the propaganda of the romantic school, including, under Art, poetry and painting, literature and sculpture, furniture and the opera.  Thus she became a mediaevalist.  She was also interested in any treasures that dated from the Renaissance, and employed her allies as so many devoted commission agents.  Soon after she was married, she had become possessed of the Rougets’ furniture, sold at Issoudun early in 1824.  She purchased some very good things at Nivernais and the Haute-Loire.  At the New Year and on her birthday her friends never failed to give her some curiosities.  These fancies found favor in the eyes of Monsieur de la Baudraye; they gave him an appearance of sacrificing a few crowns to his wife’s taste.  In point of fact, his land mania allowed him to think of nothing but the estate of Anzy.

These “antiquities” at that time cost much less than modern furniture.  By the end of five or six years the ante-room, the dining-room, the two drawing-rooms, and the boudoir which Dinah had arranged on the ground floor of La Baudraye, every spot even to the staircase, were crammed with masterpieces collected in the four adjacent departments.  These surroundings, which were called queer by the neighbors, were quite in harmony with Dinah.  All these Marvels, so soon to be the rage, struck the imagination of the strangers introduced to her; they came expecting something unusual; and they found their expectations surpassed when, behind a bower of flowers, they saw these catacombs full of old things, piled up as Sommerard used to pile them—­that “Old Mortality” of furniture.  And