She looked me through and through, and I
felt all my French getting jumbled, and it came out with such an
English accent; and after we had bowed a good deal, and said heaps of
Ollendorfish kind of sentences, I was given some "sirop" and water, and
conducted to bed by Victorine. She is a big dump with a shiny
complexion, and such a very small mouth, and I am sure I shall hate
her, she isn't a bit good-natured-looking like Jean. The house is
really fine Louis XV., and my bedroom and cabinet de toilette are
delicious, so is my bed; but the attitude of Agnes--such a conscious
pride in the superiority of France--nearly drove me mad.
There isn't a decent dressing-table mirror, only one in an old silver
frame about eight inches square, and that is sitting on the
writing-table--or what would be the writing-table, if there happened to
be any pens and things, which there aren't. All the hanging places open
out of the panels of the wall, there are no wardrobes, only beautiful
marble-topped _bureaux_; but I was so tired.
[Sidenote: _A French Family at Home_]
I left Agnes to settle everything and jumped into bed.
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