"strictly residential portion" of any American suburb.
The beds were heir-looms, and were of mahogany, there
were several bits of excellent furniture in the small,
white-paneled salon, and three pretty, brocade-covered
chairs which had come down from Madeleine's great-
grandmother; there was a piano on which Madeleine,
who had received a good substantial musical training,
played the best music there is in the world, which is to
say, German (Jules, like many modern young French-
men, had a special cult for Beethoven); and there was a
kitchen--oh, you should have seen that kitchen, white
tiles on the walls and red tiles on the floor and all around
such an array of copper and enamel utensils as can only
be found in well-kept kitchens in the French provinces
where one of the main amusements and occupations of
the excellent housewives is elaborate cooking. Further-
more, there was in the big oaken chests and tall cup-
boards a supply of bedding which would have made us
open our eyes, used as we are to our (relatively speak-
ing) hand-to-mouth American methods. Madeleine had
no more than the usual number of sheets, partly laid
aside for her, piece by piece, when the various inherit-
ances from provincial aunts and cousins came in, partly
left there in the house, in which her mother-in-law had
died the year before Madeleine's marriage, partly bought
for her (as if there were not already enough!) to make
up the traditional wedding trousseau without which no
daughter of a respectable bourgeois provincial family can
be married. So that, taking them all together, she had

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