I sauntered from the room alone, to wander through the other apartments, where objects of art and curiosities of every kind were profusely scattered. The marbles of Greece and Rome, the strange carvings of Egypt, the rich vases of Sevres were there, amid cabinet pictures of the rarest and most costly kind. Those delicious landscapes of the time of Louis the Fifteenth, where every charm of nature and art was conveyed upon the canvas: the cool arbors of Versailles, with their terraced promenades and hissing fountains,--the subjects which Vanloo loved to paint, and which that voluptuous Court loved to contemplate,--the long alleys of shady green, where gay groups were strolling in the mellow softness of an autumn sunset; those proud dames whose sweeping garments brushed the velvet turf, and at whose sides, uncovered, walked the chivalry of France,--how did they live again in the bright pencil of Moucheron! and how did they carry one in fancy to the great days of the Monarchy! Strange place for them, too,--the boudoir of her whose husband had uprooted the ancient dynasty they commemorated, had erased from the list of kings that proudest of all the royal stocks in Europe. Was it the narrow-minded glory of the Usurper, that loved to look upon the greatness he had humbled, that brought them there? or was it rather the wellspring of that proud hope just rising in his heart, that he was to be successor of those great kings whose history formed the annals of Europe itself? As I wandered on, captivated in every sense by the charm of what to me was a scene in fairyland, I came suddenly before a picture of Josephine, surrounded by the ladies of her Court. It was by Isabey, and had all the delicate beauty and transparent finish of that delightful painter. Beside it was another portrait by the same artist; and I started back in amazement at the resemblance. Never had color better caught the rich tint of a Southern complexion; the liquid softness of eye, the full and sparkling intelligence of ready wit and bright fancy, all beamed in that lovely face. It needed not the golden letters in the frame which called it “La Rose de Provence.” I sat down before it unconsciously, delighted that I might gaze on such beauty unconstrained. The white hand leaned on a balustrade, and seemed almost as if stretching from the very canvas. I could have knelt and kissed it. That was the very look she wore the hour I saw her first,--it had never left my thoughts day or night. The half-rising blush, the slightly averted head, the mingled look of impatience and kindness,--all were there; and so entranced had I become, that I feared each instant lest the vision would depart, and leave me dark and desolate. The silence of the room was almost unbroken. A distant murmur of voices, the tones of a harp, were all I heard; and I sat, I know not how long, thus wrapped in ecstasy.