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By Root 1395 0

In the bedroom, the white marble fireplace, a veritable jewel, was encrusted with lapis lazuli and precious mosaics that repeated the roses, white lilacs, and buttercups of the tapestry, displayed as in a bed of flowers. A large gray-and-pink bed, its woodwork hidden beneath padding and upholstery and its headboard pressed against the wall, filled an entire half of the room with its flowing draperies, its curtains of lace and silk brocade covered with bouquets from ceiling to carpet. It resembled a woman’s gown, rounded, patterned, and trimmed with puffs, bows, and flounces. The ample curtain, swelling out like a skirt, suggested a great lady in love—leaning back, swooning, almost collapsing onto the pillows. Beneath the curtain was a sanctuary of pleated linen and snowy lace, all sorts of delicate and transparent things bathed in a religious twilight. Alongside the bed—a monument whose devout splendor called to mind a chapel decked out for some holy day or other—the rest of the furniture was of no account: some low chairs, a full-length cheval glass, and various dressers with an infinite number of drawers. The blue-gray carpet featured a pattern of pale roses in full bloom, and on either side of the bed lay great black bearskin rugs trimmed with pink velvet and silver claws, positioned so that the bears’ heads faced the window and stared through glass eyes at the empty sky.

This bedroom possessed a gentle harmony, a muffled silence. No shrill note, no glint of metal or bright flash of gold, intruded upon the dreamy melody of pink and gray. Even the fireplace ornaments—the mirror frame, the clock, the small candelabra—were of old Sèvres 4 whose gilt copper mountings were barely visible. These were marvelous pieces, especially the clock, with its round of chubby-cheeked Cupids swooping down upon the dial and peering over its edge like a gang of naked scamps mocking the rapid passage of the hours. This subdued luxury, these colors, these objects reflected Renée’s taste for the soothing and pleasant and created a twilit setting, as in an alcove with curtains drawn. The bed seemed to go on and on, as if the entire room were one immense bed, with its carpets, its bearskins, its upholstered seats and padded wall-hangings, which carried the softness of the floor up along the walls and all the way to the ceiling. As in a bed, moreover, the young woman left the imprint, the warmth, the fragrance of her body on everything in the room. When you pulled back the double curtain of the boudoir it was as if you were lifting a silk counterpane to enter a big bed still warm and moist, covered with fine linen, upon which lay in dreamy slumber the lovely shape of a thirty-year-old Parisienne.

The adjoining wardrobe, a spacious closet hung with old chintz, was simply furnished all around with tall rosewood armoires containing an army of dresses. The very methodical Céleste lined up these dresses in order of seniority, labeled them, and brought arithmetic precision to her mistress’s whims for yellow or blue, making sure that the wardrobe was always as solemn as a sacristy and as clean as a royal stable. There was no furniture in this closet except for the armoires, and no article of clothing was ever left lying about. The panels of the cabinetry gleamed as cold and clean as the varnished panels of a coupé.

But the marvel of the apartment, the room that had all Paris talking, was the dressing room. People spoke of “beautiful Mme Saccard’s dressing room” the way they spoke of “the Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles.” The room was located in one of the mansion’s towers, just above the buttercup salon. One’s first thought on entering was of a large round tent, an enchanted tent pitched in a dream by some amorous Amazon. In the center of the ceiling, a crown of chased silver held sections of tent that curved downward to the walls and then dropped straight to the floor. This sumptuous drapery consisted of a pink silk lining covered with very thin muslin gathered in broad pleats. A lace appliqué separated the pleats, and strands of silver chain ran