Sons of the Soil | Page 7

the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of
Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the river,
is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy of the
luxurious financier who constructed it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan,
once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive Louis
XV. on a single occasion under his roof. How many ardent passions,

how many distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances
have contributed to make this beautiful place what it is! A mistress of
Henri IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now stands. The favorite of the
Great Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom Les Aigues was given),
added a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished the house with all the
elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera celebrity; and to him Les
Aigues owes the restoration of its ground floor in the style Louis XV.
I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining- room.
The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the Italian
manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female forms, in
stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils of fruit,
from which spring the garlands of the ceiling. Charming paintings, the
work of unknown artists, fill the panels between the female figures,
representing the luxuries of the table,-- boar's-heads, salmon, rare
shell-fish, and all edible things,--which fantastically suggest men and
women and children, and rival the whimsical imagination of the
Chinese,--the people who best understand, to my thinking at least, the
art of decoration. The mistress of the house finds a bell-wire beneath
her feet to summon servants, who enter only when required, disturbing
no interviews and overhearing no secrets. The panels above the
doorways represent gay scenes; all the embrasures, both of doors and
windows, are in marble mosaics. The room is heated from below.
Every window looks forth on some delightful view.
This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the
other with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined
with Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the
bath marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which
turns on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour.
The ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.
After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits the
magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard- room
unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this suite of
ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at the

lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from above, which
leads to other parts of the house, all built at various epochs--and to
think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in 1793! Good
heavens! why can't people understand that the marvels of art are
impossible in a land where there are no great fortunes, no secure,
luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing kings why not leave us a
few little princelings with money in their pockets?
At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a
charming woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely
restoring them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving
care. Sham philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be
studying humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They
grovel before cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry,
as if we were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri
IV., Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp
of their reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what
mansions, what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are
sacred now? The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs
in these degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we are,
we pull down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once were
rife. Only yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent
domain which gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the old
parliament; hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an
Italian follower of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of Regnault
de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the Prince de
Conti; in all, four royal houses have disappeared in the valley of the
Oise alone. We are getting a Roman campagna around Paris in advance
of the days when a tempest shall blow from the north and overturn our
plaster palaces and our pasteboard decorations.
Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit