第56章 VII(4)

Braschon's foreman was now nailing up the last brackets, and three men were lighting the rooms.

"It takes a hundred and twenty wax-candles," said Braschon.

"A bill of two hundred francs at Trudon's," said Madame Cesar, whose murmurs were checked by a glance from the chevalier Birotteau.

"Your ball will be magnificent, Monsieur le chevalier," said Braschon.

Birotteau whispered to himself, "Flatterers already! The Abbe Loraux urged me not to fall into that net, but to keep myself humble. I shall try to remember my origin."

Cesar did not perceive the meaning of the rich upholsterer's speech.

Braschon made a dozen useless attempts to get invitations for himself, his wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and aunt. He called the perfumer Monsieur le chevalier to the door-way, and then he departed his enemy.

The rehearsal began. Cesar, his wife, and Cesarine went out by the shop-door and re-entered the house from the street. The entrance had been remodelled in the grand style, with double doors, divided into square panels, in the centre of which were architectural ornaments in cast-iron, painted. This style of door, since become common in Paris, was then a novelty. At the further end of the vestibule the staircase went up in two straight flights, and between them was the space which had given Cesar some uneasiness, and which was now converted into a species of box, where it was possible to seat an old woman. The vestibule, paved in black and white marble, with its walls painted to resemble marble, was lighted by an antique lamp with four jets. The architect had combined richness with simplicity. A narrow red carpet relieved the whiteness of the stairs, which were polished with pumice-

stone. The first landing gave an entrance to the /entresol/; the doors to each appartement were of the same character as the street-door, but of finer work by a cabinet-maker.

The family reached the first floor and entered an ante-chamber in excellent taste, spacious, parquetted, and simply decorated. Next came a salon, with three windows on the street, in white and red, with cornices of an elegant design which had nothing gaudy about them. On a chimney-piece of white marble supported by columns were a number of mantel ornaments chosen with taste; they suggested nothing to ridicule, and were in keeping with the other details. A soft harmony prevailed throughout the room, a harmony which artists alone know how to attain by carrying uniformity of decoration into the minutest particulars,--an art of which the bourgeois mind is ignorant, though it is much taken with its results. A glass chandelier, with twenty-

four wax-candles, brought out the color of the red silk draperies; the polished floor had an enticing look, which tempted Cesarine to dance.

"How charming!" she said; "and yet there is nothing to seize the eye."

"Exactly, mademoiselle," said the architect; "the charm comes from the harmony which reigns between the wainscots, walls, cornices, and the decorations; I have gilded nothing, the colors are sober, and not extravagant in tone."

"It is a science," said Cesarine.

A boudoir in green and white led into Cesar's study.

"Here I have put a bed," said Grindot, opening the doors of an alcove cleverly hidden between the two bookcases. "If you or madame should chance to be ill, each can have your own room."

"But this bookcase full of books, all bound! Oh! my wife, my wife!"

cried Cesar.

"No; that is Cesarine's surprise."

"Pardon the feelings of a father," said Cesar to the architect, as he kissed his daughter.

"Oh! of course, of course, monsieur," said Grindot; "you are in your own home."

Brown was the prevailing color in the study, relieved here and there with green, for a thread of harmony led through all the rooms and allied them with one another. Thus the color which was the leading tone of one room became the relieving tint of another. The engraving of Hero and Leander shone on one of the panels of Cesar's study.

"Ah! /thou/ wilt pay for all this," said Birotteau, looking gaily at it.

"That beautiful engraving is given to you by Monsieur Anselme," said Cesarine.

(Anselme, too, had allowed himself a "surprise.")

"Poor boy! he has done just as I did for Monsieur Vauquelin."

The bedroom of Madame Birotteau came next. The architect had there displayed a magnificence well calculated to please the worthy people whom he was anxious to snare; he had really kept his word and /studied/ this decoration. The room was hung in blue silk, with white ornaments; the furniture was in white cassimere touched with blue. On the chimney-piece, of white marble, stood a clock representing Venus crouching, on a fine block of marble; a moquette carpet, of Turkish design, harmonized this room with that of Cesarine, which opened out of it, and was coquettishly hung with Persian chintz. A piano, a pretty wardrobe with a mirror door, a chaste little bed with simple curtains, and all the little trifles that young girls like, completed the arrangements of the room. The dining-room was behind the bedroom of Cesar and his wife, and was entered from the staircase; it was treated in the style called Louis XIV., with a clock in buhl, buffets of the same, inlaid with brass and tortoise-shell; the walls were hung with purple stuff, fastened down by gilt nails. The happiness of these three persons is not to be described, more especially when, re-entering her room, Madame Birotteau found upon her bed (where Virginie had just carried it, on tiptoe) the robe of cherry-colored velvet, with lace trimmings, which was her husband's "surprise."

"Monsieur, this appartement will win you great distinction," said Constance to Grindot. "We shall receive a hundred and more persons to-morrow evening, and you will win praises from everybody."

"I shall recommend you," said Cesar. "You will meet the very /heads/

of commerce, and you will be better known through that one evening than if you had built a hundred houses."