The young man's bedroom was hung with prettily and coquettishly fantastical Japanese stuffs, and all the furniture had come from England. Madame Castel and Madame Liauran had been charmed with some specimens which they had seen at the house of a furious Anglomaniac and distant relation of their own, and with the caprice of love they had proposed to give themselves the pleasure of affording this original elegance to their child. Accordingly, the room, which looked towards the south and always had the sun upon it, contained a charming, triple-panelled wardrobe, a wooden wainscot and a what-not mirror over the mantlepiece, two graceful brackets, a low square bed, and arm-chairs that one could lounge in for ever--in short, it was really such a _home_ of refined convenience as every rich Englishman likes to obtain. A bath-room and a smoking-room adjoined this apartment. Although Hubert was not as yet addicted to tobacco, the two women had anticipated even this habit, and it had afforded them a pretext for fitting up a little room in quite an Oriental fashion, with a profusion of Persian carpets and a broad divan draped with Algerian stuffs brought back by the General from his campaigns, while similar stuffs adorned ceilings and walls, upon which might be seen all the weapons which three generations of officers had left behind them. Some Egyptian sabres recalled the first campaign in which Hubert Castel had served in Buonaparte's retinue. The Captain in the African Army had been the owner of these Arab weapons, and those memorials of the Crimea bore witness to the presence of Sub-Lieutenant Liauran beneath the walls of Sebastopol. On leaving the smoking-room you entered the study, the windows of which were double, those inside being of coloured glass, so that on dull days it was possible not to notice the aspect of the hour. The two women had endured such frightful recurrences of melancholy on gloomy afternoons, and beneath cruel skies! A large writing-table standing in the middle of the room had in front of it one of those revolving arm-chairs which allows the worker to turn round towards the fireplace without so much as rising. A little Tronchin table presented its raised desk, if the young man took a fancy to stand as he wrote, while a couch awaited his idleness. A cottage piano stood in the corner, and a long, low bookshelf ran along the back part of the room.