Occasionally--especially on the occasion of a marriage or a death in the family--he will give magnificent banquets, and expend enormous sums on gigantic sterlets, choice sturgeons, foreign fruits, champagne, and all manner of costly delicacies.

But this lavish, ostentatious expenditure does not affect the ordinary current of his daily life.

As you enter those gaudily furnished rooms you can perceive at a glance that they are not for ordinary use.

You notice a rigid symmetry and an indescribable bareness which inevitably suggest that the original arrangements of the upholsterer have never been modified or supplemented.

The truth is that by far the greater part of the house is used only on state occasions.