by the Revolution, who had escaped to Brussels and died there after
going into bankruptcy. The Englishman died in Paris, of Paris; for to
many persons Paris is a disease,--sometimes several diseases. His
widow, a Methodist, had a horror of the little nabob establishment,
and ordered it to be sold. Comte Adam bought it at a bargain; and how
he came to do so shall presently be made known, for bargains were not
at all in his line as a grand seigneur.

Behind the house lay the verdant velvet of an English lawn shaded at
the lower end by a clump of exotic trees, in the midst of which stood
a Chinese pagoda with soundless belfries and motionless golden eggs.
The greenhouse concealed the garden wall on the northern side, the
opposite wall was covered with climbing plants trained upon poles
painted green and connected with crossway trellises. This lawn, this
world of flowers, the gravelled paths, the simulated forest, the
verdant palisades, were contained within the space of five and twenty
square rods, which are worth to-day four hundred thousand francs,--the
value of an actual forest. Here, in this solitude in the middle of
Paris, the birds sang, thrushes, nightingales, warblers, bulfinches,
and sparrows. The greenhouse was like an immense jardiniere, filling
the air with perfume in winter as in summer. The means by which its
atmosphere was made to order, torrid as in China or temperate as in
Italy, were cleverly concealed. Pipes in which hot water circulated,
or steam, were either hidden under ground or festooned with plants
overhead. The boudoir was a large room. The miracle of the modern
Parisian fairy named Architecture is to get all these many and great
things out of a limited bit of ground.

The boudoir of the young countess was arranged to suit the taste of
the artist to whom Comte Adam entrusted the decoration of the house.