There were what-nots laden with all sorts
of curiosities, Dresden and Sevres china, cornet-shaped vases of
frosted celadon, and, on the carpeted staircase, large porcelain
bowls, and a magnificent lantern suspended by a red silk cord. 'Why!
you have emptied one of Aboulcasem's siloes,' we laughingly remarked
to Balzac, as we gazed at all these splendours. 'We were quite right
in asserting that you were a millionaire.' 'I am poorer than ever I
was,' he replied, with a humble, sly air. 'Nothing of this is mine. I
have furnished the house for a friend that I am expecting. I am only
the keeper and porter.'"
Within three short years from this date, the charge fell on her--the
friend. She became the porteress of the abode which the other had
prepared with such lavish attention and expenditure, to serve him only
as a pall.
In 1875, the widow and her son-in-law, Count Mniszech, resolved to
modify the Hotel Beaujon and the adjoining buildings, with the
intention of perpetuating the novelist's memory. The rotunda of the
private chapel they planned to convert into a kind of circular atrium,
with a fountain in the middle and a trellised gallery running round
it, decorated with busts, statues, and other works of art.
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