By chance this carpet, by one of our cleverest designers, matched with the whimsicalities of the Chinese curtains. The walls, painted by Schinner and Leon de Lora, represented voluptuous scenes, in carved ebony frames, purchased for their weight in gold from Dusommerard, and forming panels with a narrow line of gold that coyly caught the light. From this you may judge of the rest. “You did well to bring me here,” said Esther. “It will take me a week to get used to my home and not to look like a parvenu in it----” “_My_ home! Den you shall accept it?” cried the Baron in glee. “Why, of course, and a thousand times of course, stupid animal,” said she, smiling. “Animal vas enough----” “Stupid is a term of endearment,” said she, looking at him. The poor man took Esther’s hand and pressed it to his heart. He was animal enough to feel, but too stupid to find words. “Feel how it beats--for ein little tender vort----” And he conducted his goddess to her room. “Oh, madame, I cannot stay here!” cried Eugenie. “It makes me long to go to bed.” “Well,” said Esther, “I mean to please the magician who has worked all these wonders.--Listen, my fat elephant, after dinner we will go to the play together. I am starving to see a play.” It was just five years since Esther had been to a theatre. All Paris was rushing at that time to the Porte-Saint-Martin, to see one of those pieces to which the power of the actors lends a terrible expression of reality, _Richard Darlington_. Like all ingenuous natures, Esther loved to feel the thrills of fear as much as to yield to tears of pathos. “Let us go to see Frederick Lemaitre,” said she; “he is an actor I adore.” “It is a horrible piece,” said Nucingen foreseeing the moment when he must show himself in public. He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on the grand tier.--And this is another strange feature of Paris. Whenever success, on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always a stage-box to be had ten minutes before the curtain rises. The managers keep it for themselves, unless it happens to be taken for a passion a la Nucingen. This box, like Chevet’s dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the Parisian Olympus. It would be superfluous to describe the plate and china. Nucingen had provided three services of plate--common, medium, and best; and the best--plates, dishes, and all, was of chased silver gilt. The banker, to avoid overloading the table with gold and silver, had completed the array of each service with porcelain of exquisite fragility in the style of Dresden china, which had cost more than the plate. As to the linen--Saxony, England, Flanders, and France vied in the perfection of flowered damask. At dinner it was the Baron’s turn to be amazed on tasting Asie’s cookery. “I understant,” said he, “vy you call her Asie; dis is Asiatic cooking.” “I begin to think he loves me,” said Esther to Europe; “he has said something almost like a _bon mot_.”