There was the huge fireplace; on the mantelpiece the same reproduction, reduced, in bronze, of Fremiet's Jeanne d'Arc, between the two globe lamps of Japanese porcelain.

He recognized the grand piano, the table loaded with albums, the divan, the chairs in the style of Louis XV with tapestried covers.

In front of every window there were imitation Chinese vases, mounted on tripods of imitation ebony and containing sickly palms.

On the walls were religious pictures, without expression, and a portrait of Chantelouve in his youth, three-quarter length, his hand resting on a pile of his works.

An ancient Russian icon in nielloed silver and one of these Christs in carved wood, executed in the seventeenth century by Bogard de Nancy, in an antique frame of gilded wood backed with velvet, were the only things that slightly relieved the banality of the decoration.