The bedroom, smart with chintz, also opened out of the drawing-room.
Mahogany in all its glory infested the dining-room, and Swiss views,
gorgeously framed, graced the panels. Crevel, who hoped to travel in
Switzerland, had set his heart on possessing the scenery in painting
till the time should come when he might see it in reality.
So, as will have been seen, Crevel, the Mayor's deputy, of the Legion
of Honor and of the National Guard, had faithfully reproduced all the
magnificence, even as to furniture, of his luckless predecessor. Under
the Restoration, where one had sunk, this other, quite overlooked, had
come to the top--not by any strange stroke of fortune, but by the
force of circumstance. In revolutions, as in storms at sea, solid
treasure goes to the bottom, and light trifles are floated to the
surface. Cesar Birotteau, a Royalist, in favor and envied, had been
made the mark of bourgeois hostility, while bourgeoisie triumphant
found its incarnation in Crevel.
This apartment, at a rent of a thousand crowns, crammed with all the
vulgar magnificence that money can buy, occupied the first floor of a
fine old house between a courtyard and a garden. Everything was as
spick-and-span as the beetles in an entomological case, for Crevel
lived very little at home.
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