It was immensely lofty, and its
festooned ceiling was carried on fluted pillars with gilded capitals.
The door by which he entered, and the windows that opened upon the
garden, were of an enormous height - almost, indeed, the full height
of the room itself. It was a room overwhelmingly gilded, with an
abundance of ormolu encrustations on the furniture, in which it
nowise differed from what was customary in the dwellings of people
of birth and wealth. Never, indeed, was there a time in which so
much gold was employed decoratively as in this age when coined gold
was almost unprocurable, and paper money had been put into
circulation to supply the lack. It was a saying of Andre-Louis'
that if these people could only have been induced to put the paper
on their walls and the gold into their pockets, the finances of the
kingdom might soon have been in better case.
The Seigneur - furbished and beruffled to harmonize with his
surroundings - had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on
the part of Benoit, who had been almost as forlorn as himself since
their coming to Meudon.
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