Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/135

 “Am I not always with you?” replied the doctor, jesting in order to respect this innocent creature’s reason, “let us go to your room.”

He gave her his arm and went up the stairs.

“Your legs are trembling, my dear friend,” she said.

“Yes, I am as if thunderstruck.”

“Are you at last going to believe in God?’ she cried with artless joy, showing the tears in her eyes.

The old man looked at the simple, pretty room he had arranged for Ursule. On the floor, a plain, cheap, green carpet that she kept in exquisite cleanliness; on the walls, a pale gray paper strewn with roses and their green foliage; the windows, which looked on the courtyard, were hung with calico curtains trimmed with a band of some pink stuff; between the two windows, under a long, high glass, was a gilded wooden bracket covered with marble upon which stood a blue Sèvres vase that she used to fill with flowers; and, opposite the fireplace, a little chest of drawers in charming marquetry with a top of the marble known as breccia of Aleppo. The bed, hung with old chintz and with curtains of pinklined chintz, was one of those duchess beds so common in the eighteenth century, and which was ornamented with a tuft of feathers carved above the four fluted posts at each angle. An old clock, encased in a sort of tortoise-shell monument encrusted with ivory arabesques, adorned the mantelpiece, of which the marble top and candlesticks,