fellow from whom a large dealer bought designs to put on his cardboard
boxes. Down below, when the wedding party entered the Assyrian Museum,
a slight shiver passed through it. The deuce! It was not at all warm
there; the hall would have made a capital cellar. And the couples slowly
advanced, their chins raised, their eyes blinking, between the gigantic
stone figures, the black marble gods, dumb in their hieratic rigidity,
and the monstrous beasts, half cats and half women, with death-like
faces, attenuated noses, and swollen lips. They thought all these things
very ugly. The stone carvings of the present day were a great deal
better. An inscription in Phoenician characters amazed them. No one
could possibly have ever read that scrawl. But Monsieur Madinier,
already up on the first landing with Madame Lorilleux, called to them,
shouting beneath the vaulted ceiling:

"Come along! They're nothing, all those things! The things to see are on
the first floor!"

The severe barrenness of the staircase made them very grave. An
attendant, superbly attired in a red waistcoat and a coat trimmed with
gold lace, who seemed to be awaiting them on the landing, increased
their emotion. It was with great respect, and treading as softly as
possible, that they entered the French Gallery.

Then, without stopping, their eyes occupied with the gilding of the
frames, they followed the string of little rooms, glancing at the
passing pictures too numerous to be seen properly. It would have
required an hour before each, if they had wanted to understand it. What
a number of pictures! There was no end to them. They must be worth a
mint of money. Right at the end, Monsieur Madinier suddenly ordered a
halt opposite the "Raft of the Medusa" and he explained the subject to