The shore opposite to Mademoiselle Cormon's garden is crowded with houses where a variety of trades are carried on; happily for her, the occupants are quiet people,--a baker, a cleaner, an upholsterer, and several bourgeois.

The garden, full of common flowers, ends in a natural terrace, forming a quay, down which are several steps leading to the river.

Imagine on the balustrade of this terrace a number of tall vases of blue and white pottery, in which are gilliflowers; and to right and left, along the neighboring walls, hedges of linden closely trimmed in, and you will gain an idea of the landscape, full of tranquil chastity, modest cheerfulness, but commonplace withal, which surrounded the venerable edifice of the Cormon family.

What peace! what tranquillity! nothing pretentious, but nothing transitory; all seems eternal there! The ground-floor is devoted wholly to the reception-rooms.

The old, unchangeable provincial spirit pervades them.