island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier who constructed it.  Les Aigues, my dear Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof.  How many ardent passions, how many distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances have contributed to make this beautiful place what it is!  A mistress of Henri IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now stands.  The favorite of the Great Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom Les Aigues was given), added a number of farms to it.  Bouret furnished the house with all the elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera celebrity; and to him Les Aigues owes the restoration of its ground floor in the style Louis XV.

I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-room.  The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking.  Female forms, in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling.  Charming paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels between the female figures, representing the luxuries of the table, —­boar’s-heads, salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,—­which fantastically suggest men and women and children, and rival the whimsical imagination of the Chinese,—­the people who best understand, to my thinking at least, the art of decoration.  The mistress of the house finds a bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter only when required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no secrets.  The panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the embrasures, both of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics.  The room is heated from below.  Every window looks forth on some delightful view.

This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other with a boudoir which opens into the salon.  The bath-room is lined with Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath marble.  An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour.  The ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold.  The tiles are painted from designs by Boucher.  Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.

After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits the magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself.  The entrance to this suite of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built at various epochs—­and to think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in 1793!  Good heavens! why can’t people understand that the marvels of art are impossible in a land where there are no great fortunes, no secure, luxurious lives?  If the Left insists on killing kings why not leave us a few little princelings with money in their pockets?