There, facing the avenue, was the
sumptuous Renaissance facade with eight lofty windows on each of its
upper floors; there, inside, was the hall, all bronze and marble,
conducting to the spacious ground-floor reception-rooms which a winter
garden prolonged; and there, up above, occupying all the central part of
the first floor, was Seguin's former "cabinet," the vast apartment with
lofty windows of old stained glass. Mathieu could well remember that room
with its profuse and amusing display of "antiquities," old brocades, old
goldsmith's ware and old pottery, and its richly bound books, and its
famous modern pewters. And he remembered it also at a later date, in the
abandonment to which it had fallen, the aspect of ruin which it had
assumed, covered, as it was, with gray dust which bespoke the slow
crumbling of the home. And now he found it once more superb and cheerful,
renovated with healthier and more substantial luxury by Ambroise, who had
put masons and joiners and upholsterers into it for a period of three
months. The whole mansion now lived afresh, more luxurious than ever,
filled at winter-time with sounds of festivity, enlivened by the laughter
of four happy children, and the blaze of a living fortune which effort
and conquest ever renewed.
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