The chimney-piece is modernized. Its
condition proves that the family has lived in this room for the last
century. It is of carved stone in the style of the Louis XV. period,
and is ornamented with a mirror, let in to the back with gilt beaded
moulding. This anachronism, to which the family is indifferent, would
grieve a poet. On the mantel-shelf, covered with red velvet, is a tall
clock of tortoise-shell inlaid with brass, flanked on each side with a
silver candelabrum of singular design. A large square table, with
solid legs, fills the centre of this room; the chairs are of turned
wood covered with tapestry. On a round table supported by a single leg
made in the shape of a vine-shoot, which stands before a window
looking into the garden, is a lamp of an odd kind. This lamp has a
common glass globe, about the size of an ostrich egg, which is
fastened into a candle-stick by a glass tube. Through a hole at the
top of the globe issues a wick which passes through a sort of reed of
brass, drawing the nut-oil held in the globe through its own length
coiled like a tape-worm in a surgeon's phial.
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