The small group of curios stood out in contrast to the profusion of furniture, materials, objects of art of all kinds, which filled the vast rooms.

It was the residence of five hundred years of power and of luxury, where masterpieces, worthy of the great Medicis, and executed in their time, alternated with the gewgaws of the eighteenth century and bronzes of the First Empire, with silver trinkets ordered but yesterday in London.

Baron Justus could not resist these.

He raised his glass and called Dorsenne to show him a curious armchair, the carving of a cartel, the embroidery on some material.

One glance sufficed for him to judge....