The arrangement of the ground-floor is that of nearly all country houses built a hundred years ago.  It was, evidently, erected on the ruins of some old castle formerly perched there.  A large panelled entrance-hall has been turned by Felicite into a billiard-room; from it opens an immense salon with six windows, and the dining-room.  The kitchen communicates with the dining-room through an office.  Camille has displayed a noble simplicity in the arrangement of this floor, carefully avoiding all splendid decoration.  The salon, painted gray, is furnished in old mahogany with green silk coverings.  The furniture of the dining-room comprises four great buffets, also of mahogany, chairs covered with horsehair, and superb engravings by Audran in mahogany frames.  The old staircase, of wood with heavy balusters, is covered all over with a green carpet.

On the floor above are two suites of rooms separated by the staircase.  Mademoiselle des Touches has taken for herself the one that looks toward the sea and the marshes, and arranged it with a small salon, a large chamber, and two cabinets, one for a dressing-room, the other for a study and writing-room.  The other suite, she has made into two separate apartments for guests, each with a bedroom, an antechamber, and a cabinet.  The servants have rooms in the attic.  The rooms for guests are furnished with what is strictly necessary, and no more.  A certain fantastic luxury has been reserved for her own apartment.  In that sombre and melancholy habitation, looking out upon the sombre and melancholy landscape, she wanted the most fantastic creations of art that she could find.  The little salon is hung with Gobelin tapestry, framed in marvellously carved oak.  The windows are draped with the heavy silken hangings of a past age, a brocade shot with crimson and gold against green and yellow, gathered into mighty pleats and trimmed with fringes and cords and tassels worthy of a church.  This salon contains a chest or cabinet worth in these days seven or eight thousand francs, a carved ebony table, a secretary with many drawers, inlaid with arabesques of ivory and bought in Venice, with other noble Gothic furniture.  Here too are pictures and articles of choice workmanship bought in 1818, at a time when no one suspected the ultimate value of such treasures.  Her bedroom is of the period of Louis XV. and strictly exact to it.  Here we see the carved wooden bedstead painted white, with the arched head-board surmounted by Cupids scattering flowers, and the canopy above it adorned with plumes; the hangings of blue silk; the Pompadour dressing-table with its laces and mirror; together with bits of furniture of singular shape,—­a “duchesse,” a chaise-longue, a stiff little sofa,—­with window-curtains of silk, like that of the furniture, lined with pink satin, and caught back with silken ropes, and a carpet of Savonnerie; in short, we find here all those elegant, rich, sumptuous, and dainty things in the midst of which the women of the eighteenth century lived and made love.