The Collection of Antiquities | Page 8

of ruined greatness. His
chivalrous fair-mindedness was so well known, that litigants many a
time had referred their disputes to him for arbitration. All gently bred
Imperalists and the authorities themselves showed as much indulgence

for his prejudices as respect for his personal character; but there was
another and a large section of the new society which was destined to be
known after the Restoration as the Liberal party; and these, with du
Croisier as their unacknowledged head, laughed at an aristocratic oasis
which nobody might enter without proof of irreproachable descent.
Their animosity was all the more bitter because honest country squires
and the higher officials, with a good many worthy folk in the town,
were of the opinion that all the best society thereof was to be found in
the Marquis d'Esgrignon's salon. The prefect himself, the Emperor's
chamberlain, made overtures to the d'Esgrignons, humbly sending his
wife (a Grandlieu) as ambassadress.
Wherefore, those excluded from the miniature provincial Faubourg
Saint-Germain nicknamed the salon "The Collection of Antiquities,"
and called the Marquis himself "M. Carol." The receiver of taxes, for
instance, addressed his applications to "M. Carol (ci-devant des
Grignons)," maliciously adopting the obsolete way of spelling.

"For my own part," said Emile Blondet, "if I try to recall my childhood
memories, I remember that the nickname of 'Collection of Antiquities'
always made me laugh, in spite of my respect--my love, I ought to
say--for Mlle. d'Esgrignon. The Hotel d'Esgrignon stood at the angle of
two of the busiest thoroughfares in the town, and not five hundred
paces away from the market place. Two of the drawing-room windows
looked upon the street and two upon the square; the room was like a
glass cage, every one who came past could look through it from side to
side. I was only a boy of twelve at the time, but I thought, even then,
that the salon was one of those rare curiosities which seem, when you
come to think of them afterwards, to lie just on the borderland between
reality and dreams, so that you can scarcely tell to which side they most
belong.
"The room, the ancient Hall of Audience, stood above a row of cellars
with grated air-holes, once the prison cells of the old court-house, now
converted into a kitchen. I do not know that the magnificent lofty
chimney-piece of the Louvre, with its marvelous carving, seemed more
wonderful to me than the vast open hearth of the salon d'Esgrignon
when I saw it for the first time. It was covered like a melon with a
network of tracery. Over it stood an equestrian portrait of Henri III.,

under whom the ancient duchy of appanage reverted to the crown; it
was a great picture executed in low relief, and set in a carved and
gilded frame. The ceiling spaces between the chestnut cross-beams in
the fine old roof were decorated with scroll-work patterns; there was a
little faded gilding still left along the angles. The walls were covered
with Flemish tapestry, six scenes from the Judgment of Solomon,
framed in golden garlands, with satyrs and cupids playing among the
leaves. The parquet floor had been laid down by the present Marquis,
and Chesnel had picked up the furniture at sales of the wreckage of old
chateaux between 1793 and 1795; so that there were Louis Quatorze
consoles, tables, clock-cases, andirons, candle-sconces and
tapestry-covered chairs, which marvelously completed a stately room,
large out of all proportion to the house. Luckily, however, there was an
equally lofty ante-chamber, the ancient Salle des Pas Perdus of the
presidial, which communicated likewise with the magistrate's
deliberating chamber, used by the d'Esgrignons as a dining-room.
"Beneath the old paneling, amid the threadbare braveries of a bygone
day, some eight or ten dowagers were drawn up in state in a quavering
line; some with palsied heads, others dark and shriveled like mummies;
some erect and stiff, others bowed and bent, but all of them tricked out
in more or less fantastic costumes as far as possible removed from the
fashion of the day, with be-ribboned caps above their curled and
powdered 'heads,' and old discolored lace. No painter however earnest,
no caricature however wild, ever caught the haunting fascination of
0those aged women; they come back to me in dreams; their puckered
faces shape themselves in my memory whenever I meet an old woman
who puts me in mind of them by some faint resemblance of dress or
feature. And whether it is that misfortune has initiated me into the
secrets of irremediable and overwhelming disaster; whether that I have
come to understand the whole range of human feelings, and, best of all,
the thoughts of Old Age and Regret; whatever the reason, nowhere and
never again have I seen among the living