The facade, composed of five windows, and the two pavilions, which projected nine feet, were in the style Phellion.
Above the door the master of the house had inserted a tablet of white marble, on which, in letters of gold, were read the words, "Aurea mediocritas." Above the sun-dial, affixed to one panel of the facade, he had also caused to be inscribed this sapient maxim: "Umbra mea vita, sic!" The former window-sills had recently been superceded by sills of red Languedoc marble, found in a marble shop.

At the bottom of the garden could be seen a colored statue, intended to lead casual observers to imagine that a nurse was carrying a child.

The ground-floor of the house contained only the salon and the dining-room, separated from each other by the well of the staircase and the landing, which formed a sort of antechamber.

At the end of the salon, in the other pavilion, was a little study occupied by Phellion.
On the first upper floor were the rooms of the father and mother and that of the young professor.

Above were the chambers of the children and the servants; for Phellion, on consideration of his own age and that of his wife, had set up a male domestic, aged fifteen, his son having by that time entered upon his duties of tuition.