Four card tables, a backgammon board, and a piquet table occupied the vast room, the only one in the house, by the bye, which was ceiled.
The dining-room, paved in black and white stone, not ceiled, and its beams painted, was furnished with one of those enormous sideboards with marble tops, required by the war waged in the provinces against the human stomach.

The walls, painted in fresco, represented a flowery trellis.

The seats were of varnished cane, and the doors of natural wood.

All things about the place carried out the patriarchal air which emanated from the inside as well as the outside of the house.

The genius of the provinces preserved everything; nothing was new or old, neither young nor decrepit.