“The effort was everywhere made to substitute straight lines for curved and broken lines and unsymmetrical forms, so that simultaneously a right principle of construction was recognized and ornament was no longer required to serve constructive ends. It recovered its place as mere decoration, and as such was added or applied to furniture, though not always happily, for chairs and tables were adorned with freely modelled festoon and floating ribbons and garlands, which were too loosely connected with the objects decorated, and stood in too slight connection with them. Not only were the structural parts of furniture once more made rectilinear, but their profiles and dimensions were decidedly more delicate, and the legs of chairs and tables tapered downward to a point. Although this is essentially right in principle, as it gives furniture a more portable appearance, still it can be carried too far. This was so much the case with the furniture of this period that tables, chairs, high-legged secretaries and cabinets look poor and thin, stiff and stilted,—an effect which is not condoned by their elegant prettiness.” The above quotation is from Falk, who goes on to say: “That which was new in the style of Louis XVI. consisted in the employment of antique ornamental designs, which, having lately been made known through the excavations at Pompeii, had become fashionable; we mean those flowery, conventional, and charming arabesques interspersed with many graceful animal forms, with which the decorators of the time skilfully and pleasingly added an approach to the realistic use of natural forms, quite opposed to the system of Rococo ornament. Perfectly preserved examples of this style of ornament, which was used at the Petit Trianon, still exist in the above-mentioned boudoir of Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau, as well as in the palace at Haga,[19] both painted on and carved in the woodwork, although the latter is not left in its natural colour, but is gilded in various shades.” Pollen describes the interior decoration of the rooms of this period as follows: