Sallust’s House was square and painted cinnamon color.  Beneath the cornice was a yellow frieze with figures of dancing children, imitated from the works of Donatello, and very unskilfully executed.  There was a meagre portico of four columns, painted red, and a plain pediment, painted yellow.  The colors, meant to match those of the walls, contrasted disagreeably with them, having been applied more recently, apparently by a color-blind artist.  The door beneath the portico stood open.  Sir Charles rang the bell, and an elderly woman answered it; but before they could address her, Trefusis appeared, clad in a painter’s jacket of white jean.  Following him in, they found that the house was a hollow square, enclosing a courtyard with a bath sunk in the middle, and a fountain in the centre of the bath.  The courtyard, formerly open to the sky, was now roofed in with dusty glass; the nymph that had once poured out the water of the fountain was barren and mutilated; and the bath was partly covered in with loose boards, the exposed part accommodating a heap of coals in one corner, a heap of potatoes in another, a beer barrel, some old carpets, a tarpaulin, and a broken canoe.  The marble pavement extended to the outer walls of the house, and was roofed in at the sides by the upper stories which were supported by fluted stone columns, much stained and chipped.  The staircase, towards which Trefusis led his visitors, was a broad one at the end opposite the door, and gave access to a gallery leading to the upper rooms.

“This house was built in 11780 by an ancestor of my mother,” said Trefusis.  “He passed for a man of exquisite taste.  He wished the place to be maintained forever—­he actually used that expression in his will—­as the family seat, and he collected a fine library here, which I found useful, as all the books came into my hands in good condition, most of them with the leaves uncut.  Some people prize uncut copies of old editions; a dealer gave me three hundred and fifty pounds for a lot of them.  I came into possession of a number of family fetishes—­heirlooms, as they are called.  There was a sword that one of my forbears wore at Edgehill and other battles in Charles the First’s time.  We fought on the wrong side, of course, but the sword fetched thirty-five shillings nevertheless.  You will hardly believe that I was offered one hundred and fifty pounds for a gold cup worth about twenty-five, merely because Queen Elizabeth once drank from it.  This is my study.  It was designed for a banqueting hall.”

They entered a room as long as the wall of the house, pierced on one side by four tall windows, between which square pillars, with Corinthian capitals supporting the cornice, were half sunk in the wall.  There were similar pillars on the opposite side, but between them, instead of windows, were arched niches in which stood life-size plaster statues, chipped, broken, and defaced in an extraordinary fashion.  The flooring,