The Purse | Page 7

caught sight of some linen hung by lines over patent ironing stoves, an
old camp-bed, some wood- embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the
household crockery, and all the utensils familiar to a small household.
Muslin curtains, fairly white, carefully screened this lumber-room--a
capharnaum, as the French call such a domestic laboratory,--which was
lighted by windows looking out on a neighboring yard.
Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, the furniture,

the general effect and condition of this first room, thus cut in half. The
more honorable half, which served both as ante-room and dining-room,
was hung with an old salmon-rose- colored paper, with a flock border,
the manufacture of Reveillon, no doubt; the holes and spots had been
carefully touched over with wafers. Prints representing the battles of
Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with the gilding rubbed off were
symmetrically arranged on the walls. In the middle stood a massive
mahogany table, old-fashioned in shape, and worn at the edges. A small
stove, whose thin straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in front of
the chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a cupboard. By a
strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of former splendor;
they were of carved mahogany, but the red morocco seats, the gilt nails
and reeded backs, showed as many scars as an old sergeant of the
Imperial Guard.
This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such as are never
seen but in this kind of amphibious household; nameless objects with
the stamp at once of luxury and penury. Among other curiosities
Hippolyte noticed a splendidly finished telescope, hanging over the
small discolored glass that decorated the chimney. To harmonize with
this strange collection of furniture, there was, between the chimney and
the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, pretending to be
mahogany, of all woods the most impossible to imitate. But the
slippery red quarries, the shabby little rugs in front of the chairs, and all
the furniture, shone with the hard rubbing cleanliness which lends a
treacherous lustre to old things by making their defects, their age, and
their long service still more conspicuous. An indescribable odor
pervaded the room, a mingled smell of the exhalations from the lumber
room, and the vapors of the dining- room, with those from the stairs,
though the window was partly open. The air from the street fluttered
the dusty curtains, which were carefully drawn so as to hide the
window bay, where former tenants had testified to their presence by
various ornamental additions--a sort of domestic fresco.
Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, where she
announced the painter with evident pleasure. Hippolyte, who, of yore,
had seen the same signs of poverty in his mother's home, noted them
with the singular vividness of impression which characterizes the
earliest acquisitions of memory, and entered into the details of this

existence better than any one else would have done. As he recognized
the facts of his life as a child, the kind young fellow felt neither scorn
for disguised misfortune nor pride in the luxury he had lately
conquered for his mother.
"Well, monsieur, I hope you no longer feel the effects of your fall,"
said the old lady, rising from an antique armchair that stood by the
chimney, and offering him a seat.
"No, madame. I have come to thank you for the kind care you gave me,
and above all mademoiselle, who heard me fall."
As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite stupidity given to
the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of true love, Hippolyte
looked at the young girl. Adelaide was lighting the Argand lamp, no
doubt that she might get rid of a tallow candle fixed in a large copper
flat candlestick, and graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its
guttering. She answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick
into the ante-room, came back, and after placing the lamp on the
chimney shelf, seated herself by her mother, a little behind the painter,
so as to be able to look at him at her ease, while apparently much
interested in the burning of the lamp; the flame, checked by the damp
in a dingy chimney, sputtered as it struggled with a charred and badly-
trimmed wick. Hippolyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the
chimney-piece, immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide.
Thus the girl's little stratagem only served to embarrass them both.
While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte called her so, on
the chance of being right, he examined the room, but unobtrusively and
by stealth.
The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely visible, the
hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands tried to meet in front of
a sham