The dining-room, the gun-room, and the smoking-room are in the right wing.  The gun-room deserves a particular description.  Four glass cases contain guns of every description and size of the best English and French manufacture.  All the furniture is made of stags’ horns, covered with fox-skins and wolf-skins.  A large rug, formed by four bears’ skins, with menacing snouts, showing their white teeth at the four corners, is in the centre of the room.  On the walls are four paintings by Princeteau, admirably executed, and representing hunting scenes.  Low couches, wide as beds, covered with gray cloth, invite the sportsmen to rest.  Large dressing-rooms, fitted up with hot and cold water, invite them to refresh themselves with a bath.  Everything has been done to suit the most fastidious taste.  The kitchens are underground.

On the first story are the principal rooms.  Twelve bedrooms, with dressing-rooms, upholstered in chintz of charming design.  From these, a splendid view of the park and country beyond may be obtained.  In the foreground is a piece of water, bathing, with its rapid current, the grassy banks which border the wood, while the low-lying branches of the trees dip into the flood, on which swans, dazzlingly white, swim in stately fashion.  Beneath an old willow, whose drooping boughs form quite a vault of pale verdure, a squadron of multicolored boats remain fastened to the balustrade of a landing stage.  Through an opening in the trees you see in the distance fields of yellow corn, and in the near background, behind a row of poplars, ever moving like a flash of silver lightning, the Oise flows on between its low banks.

This sumptuous dwelling, on the evening of the 14th of July, was in its greatest splendor.  The trees of the park were lit up by brilliant Venetian lanterns; little boats glided on the water of the lake carrying musicians whose notes echoed through the air.  Under a marquee, placed midway in the large avenue, the country lads and lasses were dancing with spirit, while the old people, more calm, were seated under the large trees enjoying the ample fare provided.  A tremendous uproar of gayety reechoed through the night, and the sound of the cornet attracted the people to the ball.

It was nine o’clock.  Carriages were fast arriving with guests for the mansion.  In the centre of the handsome hall, illuminated with electric light, stood Madame Desvarennes in full dress, having put off black for one day, doing honor to the arrivals.  Behind her stood Marechal and Savinien, like two aides-de-camp, ready, at a sign, to offer their arms to the ladies, to conduct them to the drawing-rooms.  The gathering was numerous.  Merchant-princes came for Madame Desvarennes’s sake; bankers for Cayrol’s; and the aristocrats and foreign nobility for the Prince’s.  An assemblage as opposed in ideas as in manners:  some valuing only money, others high birth; all proud and elbowing each other with haughty assurance, speaking ill of each other and secretly jealous.