The drawing-rooms of the nobility and the upper middle classes were crammed with curios; every lady must needs cover the cushions of her sofas and chairs with some piece of church vestment, and put her roses into an Umbrian ointment pot, or a chalcedony jar.

The sale-rooms were the favourite meeting-places, and every sale crowded.

It was the fashion for the ladies when they dropped in anywhere for tea in the afternoon, to enter with some such remark as--'I have just come from the sale of the painter Campos' things.

Tremendous bidding! Such Hispano-Moresque plaques! I secured a jewel belonging to Maria Leczinska.

Look!' The bidding continued.