But Madinier shouted to them from the stairs, "Come on! That is nothing! Much more interesting things up here, I assure you!" The severe nudity of the great staircase cast a gloom over their spirits; an usher in livery added to their awe, and it was with great respect and on the tips of their toes they entered the French gallery. How many statues! How many pictures! They wished they had all the money they had cost. In the Gallerie d'Apollon the floor excited their admiration; it was smooth as glass; even the feet of the sofas were reflected in it. Madinier bade them look at the ceiling and at its many beauties of decoration, but they said they dared not look up. Then before entering the Salon Carre he pointed to the window and said: "That is the balcony where Charles IX fired on the people!" With a magnificent gesture he ordered his party to stand still in the center of the Salon Carre. "There are only chefs-d'oeuvres here," he whispered as solemnly as if he had been in a church. They walked around the salon. Gervaise asked the meaning of one of the pictures, the _Noces de Cana_; Coupeau stopped before _La Joconde_, declaring that it was like one of his aunts. Boche and Bibi-la-Grillade snickered and pushed each other at the sight of the nude female figures, and the Gaudrons, husband and wife, stood open-mouthed and deeply touched before Murillo's Virgin. When they had been once around the room Madinier, who was quite attentive to Mme Lorilleux on account of her silk gown, proposed they should do it over again; it was well worth it, he said. He never hesitated in replying to any question which she addressed to him in her thirst for information, and when she stopped before Titian's Mistress, whose yellow hair struck her as like her own, he told her it was a mistress of Henri IV, who was the heroine of a play then running at the Ambigu. The wedding party finally entered the long gallery devoted to the Italian and Flemish schools of art. The pictures were all meaningless to them, and their heads were beginning to ache. They felt a thrill of interest, however, in the copyists with their easels, who painted without being disturbed by spectators. The artists scattered through the rooms had heard that a primitive wedding party was making a tour of the Louvre and hurried with laughing faces to enjoy the scene, while the weary bride and bridegroom, accompanied by their friends, clumsily moved about over the shining, resounding floors much like cattle let loose and with quite as keen an appreciation of the marvelous beauties about them.