All this time, and lately with her son's energetic help, Madame de Sainfoy had been arranging her rooms in the most approved fashion of the day. The new furniture was far less beautiful than the old, and far less suited to the character of the house; still, like everything belonging to the Empire, it had a severe magnificence. The materials were mahogany and gilded bronze; the forms were classical, lyres, urns, winged sphinxes everywhere. In the large salon the walls were hung with yellow silk instead of the old, despised, but precious tapestries, the long curtains that swept the floor were yellow silk, with broad bands of red and yellow and a heavy fringe of red and yellow balls. These fashions were repeated in each room in different colours, green, blue, red; a smaller salon, Madame de Sainfoy's favourite, was hung with a peculiar green flecked with gold; and for the chairs in this room she, Hélène, Mademoiselle Moineau, and the young girls were working a special tapestry with wreaths of grapes or asters, lyres, Roman heads which suggested Napoleon. Certain unaccountable stains on this fine work brought a smile long years afterwards into the lovely eyes of Hélène. Paper and paint, innovations at Lancilly, had much to do in beautifying the old place. Dark rooms were well lit up by a white paper with a broad border of red and yellow twisted ribbons. Old stone chimneypieces, window-sills, great solid shutters, were covered thick with yellow paint. The ideas of Captain Georges were still more modern than those of Urbain, and suited his mother better. She was angry with Urbain for forsaking her business and hurrying off to Paris in search of his worthless son; she was especially angry that he went without giving her notice, or offering to do any of the thousand commissions she could gladly have given him. However, these faults in Urbain only made Georges more valuable; and it was with something not far short of fury that she refused to listen to her husband when he suggested that the ball might be put off because of the trouble and sorrow that hung over his cousins at La Marinière. The ball was stately and splendid. At the dinner-party a few weeks before, only a certain number of notables had been present, and chiefly old friends of the family. To the ball came everybody of any pretension whatever, within a radius of many miles. Lancilly stood in Anjou, but near the borders of Touraine and Maine; all these old provinces were well represented. Many of the guests were returned emigrants: old sentiment connected with the names of Sainfoy and Lancilly brought them. Many more were new people of the Empire; mushroom families, on whom the older ones looked curiously and scornfully. There was a brilliant and dashing body of officers from Sonnay-le-Loir, with General Ratoneau at their head. There were a number of civil officials of the Empire, though the Prefect himself was not there.