It was an apartment about thirty feet in length, and of the width
of two windows, which sufficiently lighted one half of a very long
table with round ends. The gloom of the other extremity was
illumined by a large mirror in a tarnished gilt frame, which
filled a good portion of the wall opposite the windows. Near the
mirror was a high folding-screen of four leaves, and behind this
screen could be heard the sound of a door continually shutting and
opening. In the long wall to the left of the windows were two
doors, one dark and important, a door of state, through which a
procession of hungry and a procession of sated solemn self-
conscious persons passed twice daily, and the other, a smaller
door, glazed, its glass painted with wreaths of roses, not an
original door of the house, but a late breach in the wall, that
seemed to lead to the dangerous and to the naughty. The wall-paper
and the window drapery were rich and forbidding, dark in hue,
mysterious of pattern. Over the state-door was a pair of antlers.
And at intervals, so high up as to defy inspection, engravings and
oil-paintings made oblong patches on the walls. They were hung
from immense nails with porcelain heads, and they appeared to
depict the more majestic aspect of man and nature.
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