One day, some of her visitors, who were admiring the taste with which she had newly furnished a room, inquired for what those two compartments were intended, looking at the compartments which had been prepared for the famous pictures. Mrs. Somers replied that she had not yet determined what she should put there: she glanced her eye upon Mad. de Coulanges and upon Emilie, to observe whether they _felt as they ought to do_. Mad. de Coulanges, imagining that an appeal was made to her taste, decidedly answered, that nothing would have so fine an effect as handsome looking-glasses: “Such,” added she, “as we have at Paris. No house is furnished without them--they are absolute necessaries of life. And, no doubt, these places were originally intended for mirrors.” “No,” said Mrs. Somers, dryly, and with a look of great displeasure: “No, madame la comtesse, those places were not originally intended for looking-glasses.” The countess secretly despised Mrs. Somers for her want of taste; but, being too well bred to dispute the point, she confessed that she was no judge--that she knew nothing of the matter; and then immediately turned to her abbé, and asked him if he remembered the superb mirrors in Mad. de V----‘s charming house on the Boulevards. “It is,” said she, “in my opinion one of the very best houses in Paris. There you enter the principal apartments by an antechamber, such as you ought to see in a great house, with real ottomanes, covered with buff trimmed with black velvet; and then you pass through the spacious salle à manger and the delightful saloon, hung with blue silk, to the _bijou_ of a boudoir, that looks out upon the garden, with the windows shaded by the most beautiful flowering shrubs in summer, and in winter adorned with exotics. Then you see, through the plate-glass door of the boudoir, into the gallery of paintings--I call it a gallery, but it is, in fact, a delightful room, not a gallery--where you are not to perish in cold, whilst you admire the magnificence of the place. Not at all: it is warmed by a large stove, and you may examine the fine pictures at your ease, or, as you English would say, in comfort. This gallery must have cost M. de V---- an immense sum. The connoisseurs say that it is really the best collection of Flemish pictures in the possession of any individual in France. By-the-bye, Mrs. Somers, there is, amongst others, an excellent Van Dyck, a portrait of your Charles the First, when a boy, which I wonder that none of you rich English have purchased.” The countenance of Mrs. Somers had clouded over more and more during this speech; but the heedless countess went on, with her usual volubility.