Explore "The Parisians, Book VI" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Nothing could be simpler than the apartment of the Vicomte de Mauleon, in the second story of a quiet old-fashioned street. It had been furnished at small cost out of his savings. Yet, on the whole, it evinced the good taste of a man who had once been among the exquisites of the polite world. You felt that you were in the apartment of a gentleman, and a gentleman of somewhat severe tastes, and of sober matured years. He was sitting the next morning in the room which he used as a private study. Along the walls were arranged dwarf bookcases, as yet occupied by few books, most of them books of reference, others cheap editions of the French classics in prose -- no poets, no romance-writers, with a few Latin authors also in prose, -- Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus. He was engaged at his desk writing, -- a book with its leaves open before him, "Paul Louis Courier," that model of political irony and masculine style of composition. There was a ring at his door-bell. The Vicomte kept no servant.
He rose and answered the summons. He recoiled a few paces on recognizing his visitor in M. Hennequin.