Still, Valerie, though always nicely dressed, affected the
simplicity of a subordinate official's wife; she kept her luxury for
her dressing-gowns, her home wear. She thus sacrificed her Parisian
vanity to her dear Hector. At the theatre, however, she always
appeared in a pretty bonnet and a dress of extreme elegance; and the
Baron took her in a carriage to a private box.
Her rooms, the whole of the second floor of a modern house in the Rue
Vanneau, between a fore-court and a garden, was redolent of
respectability. All its luxury was in good chintz hangings and
handsome convenient furniture.
Her bedroom, indeed, was the exception, and rich with such profusion
as Jenny Cadine or Madame Schontz might have displayed. There were
lace curtains, cashmere hangings, brocade portieres, a set of chimney
ornaments modeled by Stidmann, a glass cabinet filled with dainty
nicknacks. Hulot could not bear to see his Valerie in a bower of
inferior magnificence to the dunghill of gold and pearls owned by a
Josepha. The drawing-room was furnished with red damask, and the
dining-room had carved oak panels. But the Baron, carried away by his
wish to have everything in keeping, had at the end of six months,
added solid luxury to mere fashion, and had given her handsome
portable property, as, for instance, a service of plate that was to
cost more than twenty-four thousand francs.
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