The houses in this
part of town are better built than elsewhere, and that of the
Descoings's was one of the finest. It stands opposite to the house of
Monsieur Hochon, and has three windows in front on the first storey,
and a porte-cochere on the ground-floor which gives entrance to a
courtyard, beyond which lies the garden. Under the archway of the
porte-cochere is the door of a large hall lighted by two windows on
the street. The kitchen is behind this hall, part of the space being
used for a staircase which leads to the upper floor and to the attic
above that. Beyond the kitchen is a wood-shed and wash-house, a stable
for two horses and a coach-house, over which are some little lofts for
the storage of oats, hay, and straw, where, at that time, the doctor's
servant slept.
The hall which the little peasant and her uncle admired with such
wonder is decorated with wooden carvings of the time of Louis XV.,
painted gray, and a handsome marble chimney-piece, over which Flore
beheld herself in a large mirror without any upper division and with a
carved and gilded frame. On the panelled walls of the room, from space
to space, hung several pictures, the spoil of various religious
houses, such as the abbeys of Deols, Issoudun, Saint-Gildas, La Pree,
Chezal-Beniot, Saint-Sulpice, and the convents of Bourges and
Issoudun, which the liberality of our kings had enriched with the
precious gifts of the glorious works called forth by the Renaissance.
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