This hospitable fire flared up a chimney proportioned to its size, lighting the huge brick oven, the iron fire-dogs, the bellows, shovel, gridiron, ladles, cauldrons, saucepans, mortar, tin pails, and other utensils that stood on the brackets of the hearth; and irradiating the brass and copper pots, the metal candlesticks, the lamp, the lantern, the not unfrequent silver beaker, and the glass drinking-cups, that were ranged on the chests and cupboards round the walls.[21] Near this fire stood a high-backed settle, the master’s ingle corner; and under the great mantel of the chimney narrower benches were set in the brick. Within easy reach of the hearth, a deep oak chest held the logs for burning. It was generally matched by a handsome wedding-chest with carved or painted front, long enough to contain a grown person full-length (as the readers of _Ginevra_ will mournfully remember), but more usually filled, it must be admitted, with the best clothes, the trinkets, and the savings of the household. The _Registers of the Châtelet_ record no crime so common as the breaking open of such wedding-chests; and it is surprising how many clasps or jewels, girdles of pearls, golden head-dresses and rings, and purses full of gold, were stolen from quite humble households. Our forefathers lived in times when the letting out of money at interest was insecure and considered a deadly sin, so they invested their capital in cups or trinkets of precious metal, pretty to look at, easy to hide, and readily converted into cash when necessity demanded a sacrifice. The windows of this great kitchen were almost always small and rarely glazed: conceive it as a great stone cavern lit up by an undying fire that played on glittering surfaces. The light came chiefly from the hearth, or from the home-made rushlights of the north, the flaring pine-torches of the south, which lit the spinning wives and maidens, when at close of day they clustered round the fire. In the daytime the kitchen was a dusky place, as indeed it is still in most French country places, where its aspect has singularly little altered. Sometimes the only aperture, besides the door and chimney, was such a small square window as may be seen to-day in the cottages of Savoy, pasted over with a piece of oiled linen, impervious to the air. Often a heavy shutter, made of one slab of polished oak, protected a small uncovered lattice, shutting with a spring. These houses, so hygienically built to face the rising or the mid-day sun, could receive scarce a ray of its purifying light. Doubtless the vast chimney and the day-long fire sufficed to ventilate their dark recesses.