“Ah! it is you, sir,” cried she.

This exclamation escaped her just loud enough to be audible at the extremity of the apartment, and serve as a signal if needed.  It was as if she had cried, “Take care!”

Noel did not seem to notice it.  “Madame is there?” asked he.

“Yes, sir, and very angry too.  This morning she wanted to send some one to you.  A little while ago she spoke of going to find you, sir, herself.  I have had much difficulty in prevailing on her not to disobey your orders.”

“Very well,” said the advocate.

“Madame is in the smoking room,” continued the girl “I am making her a cup of tea.  Will you have one, sir?”

“Yes,” replied Noel.  “Show me a light, Charlotte.”

He passed successively through a magnificent dining-room, a splendid gilded drawing-room in Louis XIV. style, and entered the smoking-room.  This was a rather large apartment with a very high ceiling.  Once inside one might almost fancy oneself three thousand miles from Paris, in the house of some opulent mandarin of the celestial Empire.  Furniture, carpet, hangings, pictures, all had evidently been imported direct from Hong Kong or Shanghai.  A rich silk tapestry representing brilliantly coloured figures, covered the walls, and hid the doors from view.  All the empire of the sun and moon was depicted thereon in vermillion landscapes:  corpulent mandarins surrounded by their lantern-bearers; learned men lay stupefied with opium, sleeping under their parasols; young girls with elevated eyebrows, stumbled upon their diminutive feet swathed in bandages.  The carpet of a manufacture unknown to Europeans, was strewn with fruits and flowers, so true to nature that they might have deceived a bee.  Some great artist of Pekin had painted on the silk which covered the ceiling numerous fantastic birds, opening on azure ground their wings of purple and gold.  Slender rods of lacquer, inlaid with mother of pearl, bordered the draperies, and marked the angles of the apartment.  Two fantastic looking chests entirely occupied one side of the room.  Articles of furniture of capricious and incoherent forms, tables with porcelain tops, and chiffoniers of precious woods encumbered every recess or angle.  There were also ornamental cabinets and shelves purchased of Lien-Tsi, the Tahan of Sou-Tcheou, the artistic city, and a thousand curiosities, both miscellaneous and costly, from the ivory sticks which are used instead of forks, to the porcelain teacups, thinner than soap bubbles,—­miracles of the reign of Kien-Loung.  A very large and very low divan piled up with cushions, covered with tapestry similar to the hangings, occupied one end of the room.  There was no regular window, but instead a large single pane of glass, fixed into the wall of the house; in front of it was a double glass door with moveable panes, and the space between was filled with the most rare flowers.  The grate was replaced by registers adroitly concealed, which maintained in the apartment a temperature fit for hatching silkworms, thus truly harmonising with the furniture.