"For my part, I was more interested in the zephyr-glasses I found on this table of the early Venetian manufacture, delicate and graceful as the flacons of Fairyland. There are imitations of this exquisite glass now made, but there were none a hundred years ago, and these are unquestionably genuine. A remarkable chalice also attracted our notice, and we decided it to be either the bridal or the christening-cup of the Courance family. It is a mass of solid silver, about fourteen inches high, on a base of ebony and pearl: it is wrought out of block silver in the Genoese method, and is designed in deep panels divided by wreathed columns: these panels are covered with inscriptions, seemingly of names and dates, most of them illegible--'Robillard Puyraveau du Guesclin, 1602,' being the earliest we could make out. We found several varieties, or, as Perry says, 'classes,' of porcelain--beautiful plates of Sevres, painted in the most charming designs by masters to us unknown--and of the different sorts of this ware there must be several hundred pieces, each a gem of price to-day. "Of course we flew from one thing to another, and did not wait upon any order of our going about, nor did we examine a tenth part of the treasures on the tables: but it strikes me now that the wealth in silver alone there must be simply enormous. The intendant could tell us nothing positive, and everything is so black and encrusted with dust that we could not see with certainty: but it is probable that what appears to be family plate, literally covering these tables, is the Courance heirloom silver. Much of it is very old, as shown by the antique designs and the marks of wear. Near the centre of one of the long tables we cleared up eighteen or twenty beautiful pieces of the Italian school established in Paris under the patronage of Francis I., and on the dais-table a full set, the exquisite work of the Antwerp smiths, dated 1598. "We had no means for brushing off the pictures, and M. Gambeau was not in the least inclined to help us, being not at all pleased with our disturbing the dust of ages so freely. However, the walls are in a good state, and we could see very well that between the windows they are decorated by Boucher with the elaborate and formal panels of Paris in his time. At the lower end of the room is a very large and magnificent fruit-and flower-piece by Jan van Huysum of Amsterdam. On each side of the dais are grand entrances from the main hall of the 'new house,' but the floor is broken up at this end of the salon, probably by rats, and rather than risk a fall we returned by the kitchen passage.