“What think you of my statuary?” inquired the old hostess, “and my antiques?  Have I not taste enough for a princess?” How soft the carpet, how rich its colors!  Those marble mantel-pieces, sculptured in female figures, how massive!  How elegantly they set off each end of the hall, as we shall call this room; and how sturdily they bear up statuettes, delicately executed in alabaster and Parian, of Byron, Goethe, Napoleon, and Charlemagne-two on each.  And there, standing between two Gothic windows on the front of the hall, is an antique side-table, of curious design.  The windows are draped with curtains of rich purple satin, with embroidered cornice skirts and heavy tassels.  On this antique table, and between the undulating curtains, is a marble statue of a female in a reclining posture, her right hand supporting her head, her dishevelled hair flowing down her shoulder.  The features are soft, calm, and almost grand.  It is simplicity sleeping, Madame Flamingo says.  On the opposite side of the hall are pedestals of black walnut, with mouldings in gilt, on which stand busts of Washington and Lafayette, as if they were unwilling spectators of the revelry.  A venerable recline, that may have had a place in the propyl‘a, or served to decorate the halls of Versailles in the days of Napoleon, has here a place beneath the portrait of Jefferson.  This humble tribute the old hostess says she pays to democracy.  And at each end of the hall are double alcoves, over the arches of which are great spread eagles, holding in their beaks the points of massive maroon-colored drapery that falls over the sides, forming brilliant depressions.  In these alcoves are groups of figures and statuettes, and parts of statuettes, legless and armless, and all presenting a rude and mutilated condition.  What some of them represented it would have puzzled the ancient Greeks to decypher.  Madame, nevertheless, assures her guests she got them from among the relics of Italian and Grecian antiquity.  You may do justice to her taste on living statuary; but her rude and decrepit wares, like those owned and so much valued by our New York patrons of the arts, you may set down as belonging to a less antique age of art.  And there are chairs inlaid with mosaic and pearl, and upholstered with the richest and brightest satin damask,—­revealing, however, that uncouthness of taste so characteristic of your Fifth Avenue aristocrat.

Now cast your eye upward to the ceiling.  It is frescoed with themes of a barbaric age.  The finely-outlined figure of a female adorns the centre.  Her loins are enveloped in what seems a mist; and in her right hand, looking as if it were raised from the groundwork, she holds gracefully the bulb of a massive chandelier, from the jets of which a refulgent light is reflected upon the flowery banquet table.  Madame smilingly says it is the Goddess of Love, an exact copy of the one in the temple of Jupiter Olympus.  Another just opposite, less voluptuous in its outlines, she adds, is intended for a copy of the fabled goddess, supposed by the ancients to have thrown off her wings to illustrate the uncertainty of fortune.