style, and entered the smoking-room.
This was a rather large apartment with a very high ceiling.

Once inside one might almost fancy oneself three thousand miles from Paris, in the house of some opulent mandarin of the celestial Empire.

Furniture, carpet, hangings, pictures, all had evidently been imported direct from Hong Kong or Shanghai.

A rich silk tapestry representing brilliantly coloured figures, covered the walls, and hid the doors from view.
All the empire of the sun and moon was depicted thereon in vermillion landscapes: corpulent mandarins surrounded by their lantern-bearers; learned men lay stupefied with opium, sleeping under their parasols; young girls with elevated eyebrows, stumbled upon their diminutive feet swathed in bandages.

The carpet of a manufacture unknown to Europeans, was strewn with fruits and flowers, so true to nature that they might have deceived a bee.