On a turning of the staircase was a bath-room, with a little sort of sentry-box for cold douches, and at the top of the house an enormous garret, filled with broken old spinning-wheels and furniture, bundles of old dresses, chests full of dusty papers. I found here one day _bonne maman's_ betrothal-dress. It was of stiff, rich satin, a wide blue and white stripe, with a dark line on each side of the blue and a little garland of pink roses running up the white. The long, pointed bodice was incredibly narrow. A strange detail was the coarseness with which this beautiful dress was finished inside. It was lined with a sort of sacking, and the old lace with which it was still adorned was pinned into place with brass safety-pins. Finally, for my description of the house, there was a big courtyard, with the servants' quarters built round it, and a clear little stream ran through a _basse-cour_ stocked with poultry. I had not seen this house for over fifty years when, some time ago, I went to visit it. The new proprietor, an unprepossessing person, was leaning against the great oaken door. He permitted me, very ungraciously, to enter. I went through all these rooms that two generations ago had rung with the sounds of our happy young life, and it was misery to me. In the kitchen, which had been so beautiful, the window-panes were broken, and the dismantled walls daubed with whitewash, with dusty, empty bottles where Nicole's Virgin had stood. Upon the table was a greasy, discolored oil-cloth, where one saw M. Thiers, with knitted eyebrows and folded arms, surrounded by tricolor flags. The salon--I sobbed as I stood and looked about it; all, all that I had known and loved had disappeared. The stone Virgin was gone from her niche in the hall. Trembling, I mounted to my dear parents' rooms. What desolation! Unmade beds and rickety iron bedsteads; dust, disorder, and dirt. The carved chimneypiece, with its great drawer, was gone; the paper was peeled from the walls. Only over the doors, almost invisible under their cobwebs, were the painted panels of Love, who makes Time pass, and Time, who makes Love pass. The garden was a dung-heap. When I came out, pale and shaken, the proprietor, still complacently leaning against the door, remarked, "_Eh bien_, Madam is glad to have seen her house, isn't she!" The animal! I could have strangled him! [Illustration: "I felt that Tante Rose was enchanting"] CHAPTER V TANTE ROSE