His adoration of property rights made him beside himself with wrath at these sacrileges.
He began to worry about his castle at Villeblanche.

All that he owned in Paris suddenly seemed to him of slight importance to what he had in his historic mansion.

His best paintings were there, adorning the gloomy salons; there, too, the furnishings captured from the antiquarians after an auctioneering battle, and the crystal cabinets, the tapestries, the silver services.
He mentally reviewed all of these objects, not letting a single one escape his inventory.

Things that he had forgotten came surging up in his memory, and the fear of losing them seemed to give them greater lustre, increasing their size, and intensifying their value.

All the riches of Villeblanche were concentrated in one certain acquisition which Desnoyers admired most of all; for, to his mind, it stood for all the glory of his immense fortune--in fact, the most luxurious appointment that even a millionaire could possess.
"My golden bath," he thought.