Grandmother Dear | Page 8

Sylvia lugubriously. "Why do they call it 'Salle Henri II.?' It should be called after Henry the Fourth; and I don't think it should have pictures in, and be just like a common room."
"What would you have it? Hung round with black and tapers burning?" said her aunt.
"I don't know--any way I thought it would have had old tapestry," said Sylvia. "I should like it to have been kept just the way it was then."
"Poor Sylvia!" said grandmother. "But we must hurry on, children. We have not seen the 'Petite Galérie' yet--dear me, how many years it is since I was in it!--and some of the most beautiful pictures are there."
They passed on--grandmother leaning on aunty's arm--the three children close behind, through a room called the "Salle des Sept Cheminées," along a vestibule filled with cases of jewellery, leading again to one of the great staircases. Something in the vestibule attracted grandmother's attention, and she stopped for a moment. Sylvia, not interested in what the others were looking at, turned round and retraced her steps a few paces by the way they had entered the hall. A thought had struck her.
"I'd like just to run back for a moment to Henry the Fourth's Room," she said to herself. "I want to notice the shape of it exactly, and how many windows there are, and then I think I can fancy to myself how it looked then, with the tapestry and all the old-fashioned furniture."
No sooner thought than done. In a moment she was back in the room which had so curiously fascinated her, taking accurate note of its features.
"I shall remember it now," she said to herself, after gazing round her for a minute or two. "Now I must run after grandmother and the others, or they'll be thinking I am lost."
She turned with a little laugh at the idea, and hastened out of the room, through the few groups of people standing or moving about, looking at the pictures--hastened out, expecting in another moment to see the familiar figures. The room into which she made her way was also filled with pictures, as had been the one through which she had entered the "Salle Henri II." She crossed it without misgiving: she had no idea that she had left the Salle Henri II. by the opposite door from that by which she had entered it!
Poor little Sylvia, she did not know that grandmother's warning was actually to be fulfilled. She was "lost in the Louvre!"
CHAPTER III.
"WHERE IS SYLVIA?"
"What called me back? A voice of happy childhood,
"Yet might I not bewail the vision gone, My heart so leapt to that dear loving tone."
Mrs. HEMANS, "An Hour of Romance."
She did not find out her mistake. She passed through the room and entered the vestibule into which it led, quite confident that she would meet the others in an instant. There were several groups standing about this vestibule as there had been in the other, but none composed of the figures she was looking for.
"They must have passed on," said Sylvia to herself; "I wish they hadn't; perhaps they never noticed I wasn't beside them."
Then for the first time a slight feeling of anxiety seized her. She hurried quickly across the ante-room where she was standing, to find herself in another "salle," which was quite unlike any of the others she had seen. Instead of oil-paintings, it was hung round with colourless engravings. Here, too, there were several people standing about, but none whom, even for an instant, Sylvia could have mistaken for her friends.
"How quickly they must have hurried on," she thought, her heart beginning to beat faster. "I do think they might have waited a little. They must have missed me by now."
No use delaying in this room. Sylvia hurried on, finding herself now in that part of the palace devoted to ancient pottery and other antiquities, uninteresting to a child. The rooms through which she passed were much less crowded than those containing pictures. At a glance it was easy to distinguish that those she was in search of were not there. Still she tried to keep up heart.
"There is nothing here they would much care about," she said to herself. "If I could get back to the picture rooms I should be sure to find them."
At last, to her delight, after crossing a second vestibule, from which descended a great staircase which she fancied she had seen before, she entered another of the long galleries completely hung with paintings. She bounded forward joyously.
"They're sure to be here," she said.
The room was very crowded. She dared not rush through it as fast as hitherto; it was so crowded that she felt it would be quite possible to overlook a group of even four. More than once she fancied she