Michael de Thury.
From this hall, passages led into apartments and suites of rooms
arranged for use, comfort, and hospitality. The rooms were of all
sizes, panelled, tapestried, and furnished in a style of splendor
suited to the wealth and dignity of the Seigneurs of Tilly. A stair
of oak, broad enough for a section of grenadiers to march up it
abreast, led to the upper chambers, bedrooms, and boudoirs, which
looked out of old mullioned windows upon the lawn and gardens that
surrounded the house, affording picturesque glimpses of water,
hills, and forests far enough off for contemplation, and yet near
enough to be accessible by a short ride from the mansion.
Pierre Philibert was startled at the strange familiarity of
everything he saw: the passages and all their intricacies, where he,
Le Gardeur, and Amelie had hid and found one another with cries of
delight,--he knew where they all led to; the rooms with their
antique and stately furniture, the paintings on the wall, before
which he had stood and gazed, wondering if the world was as fair as
those landscapes of sunny France and Italy and why the men and women
of the house of Tilly, whose portraits hung upon the walls, looked
at him so kindly with those dark eyes of theirs, which seemed to
follow him everywhere, and he imagined they even smiled when their
lips were illumined by a ray of sunshine.
Pages:
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536