As a child I was afraid to climb the great staircase and cross through the vast solitude of these high-ceilinged rooms; when I wanted to visit the princess, I used a little staircase that descends under the vault of the larger one and leads to the hidden door of her boudoir.

Her apartment, made up of a drawing room, a bedroom, and that pretty vermillion-and-gold study I told you of, occupies the wing on the Invalides side. The house is separated from the boulevard only by a vine-covered wall and a magnificent row of trees whose boughs interlace with those of the elms on the boulevard’s side street. Were it not for the gray façades and blue-and-gold dome of Les Invalides, one might think oneself in a forest. The style and placement of those three rooms show them to be the former parade apartment of the duchesses of Chaulieu, with the dukes’ no doubt in the facing wing, kept at a proper distance by two central buildings and the front pavilion, which holds those huge, dark, echoing rooms Philippe had shown me, still stripped of their splendor, just as I saw them in my childhood. Noting the astonishment on my face, Philippe took on a confidential air. My dear, in this diplomatic house, everyone is discreet and mysterious. He told me that the family was awaiting a law by which those who emigrated during the Revolution would be reimbursed for the value of their property; my father will restore his house only when that restitution comes. The king’s architect put the cost at three hundred thousand livres.[8] That revelation fairly threw me to the sofa in my drawing room. So my father was prepared to let me perish in the convent rather than devote that sum to my dowry? There is the thought that greeted me in that doorway. Ah, Renée, how I lay my head on your shoulder, and how I thought back to the days when my grandmother animated these two rooms! She who exists only in my heart, you who are at Maucombe, two hundred leagues away, those are the only creatures in this world who love me, or who once did.

That dear old woman always tried to rouse herself on hearing my voice, her gaze still youthful. How well we got on! That memory immediately brought a change to my mood. I found something holy in what I had a moment before seen as a profanation. I took comfort in the vague lingering odor of wig powder, in the idea of sleeping in the protection of those yellow-and-white damask curtains, on which her gaze and her breath must have left something of her soul. I directed Philippe to restore all these old things to their former beauty, that I might have rooms fit to live in. I told him myself exactly what I wanted, assigning everything a place. I inspected the furnishings one by one, making them mine, advising Philippe how those antiques I so love could be made new again. The white walls have gone a little dull with age, just as the gold of the frolicsome arabesques is tarnished here and there, but those effects harmonize with the faded colors of the Savonnerie rug given to my grandmother by Louis XV, along with his portrait. The clock is a gift from Marshal de Saxe. The porcelains on the mantelpiece come from Marshal de Richelieu. Ringed by an oval frame, my grandmother’s portrait, painted when she was twenty-five, faces the king’s. The prince is nowhere to be seen. I like that forthright omission, which depicts her delicious character with a single stroke. Once, when my aunt was gravely ill, her confessor insisted that the prince be allowed in from the drawing room where he was waiting. “Along with the doctor and his prescriptions,” said the princess. The bed has a canopy and a padded headboard; the drape of the pulled-back curtains is wonderfully sumptuous; the furniture is of gilded wood, upholstered in that same yellow damask with white flowers that also covers the windows, lined with a white silk that resembles moiré. I have no idea who did the paintings over the door, but they depict a sunrise and a moonlit night. The treatment of the fireplace is quite curious. Clearly much of life was lived by the fireside in the last century: great things happened there. The hearth of gilded copper is a sculptural marvel, the mantelpiece is lavishly finished, the shovel and tongs are deliciously worked, the bellows are a thing of beauty. The fire screen’s tapestry comes from Les Gobelins, and its frame is exquisite; the most wonderful figures meander along it, on the feet, on the footrest, on the branches; everything is as intricate as a fan.