CHAPTER II--LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOUSE

  He lived in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6. He owned thehouse. This house has since been demolished and rebuilt, and the numberhas probably been changed in those revolutions of numeration which thestreets of Paris undergo. He occupied an ancient and vast apartmenton the first floor, between street and gardens, furnished to the veryceilings with great Gobelins and Beauvais tapestries representingpastoral scenes; the subjects of the ceilings and the panels wererepeated in miniature on the arm-chairs. He enveloped his bed in a vast,nine-leaved screen of Coromandel lacquer. Long, full curtains hung fromthe windows, and formed great, broken folds that were very magnificent.The garden situated immediately under his windows was attached to thatone of them which formed the angle, by means of a staircase twelve orfifteen steps long, which the old gentleman ascended and descended withgreat agility. In addition to a library adjoining his chamber, he had aboudoir of which he thought a great deal, a gallant and elegant retreat,with magnificent hangings of straw, with a pattern of flowers andfleurs-de-lys made on the galleys of Louis XIV. and ordered of hisconvicts by M. de Vivonne for his mistress. M. Gillenormand hadinherited it from a grim maternal great-aunt, who had died acentenarian. He had had two wives. His manners were something betweenthose of the courtier, which he had never been, and the lawyer, whichhe might have been. He was gay, and caressing when he had a mind. Inhis youth he had been one of those men who are always deceived by theirwives and never by their mistresses, because they are, at the sametime, the most sullen of husbands and the most charming of lovers inexistence. He was a connoisseur of painting. He had in his chamber amarvellous portrait of no one knows whom, painted by Jordaens, executedwith great dashes of the brush, with millions of details, in a confusedand hap-hazard manner. M. Gillenormand's attire was not the habit ofLouis XIV. nor yet that of Louis XVI.; it was that of the Incroyablesof the Directory. He had thought himself young up to that period andhad followed the fashions. His coat was of light-weight cloth withvoluminous revers, a long swallow-tail and large steel buttons. Withthis he wore knee-breeches and buckle shoes. He always thrust his handsinto his fobs. He said authoritatively: "The French Revolution is a heapof blackguards."