The Bavarian upholsterer who had been entrusted with the
furnishing of this hotel had varied his scheme of decoration in different
rooms, and in that which I found myself occupying had set against the
walls, on three sides of it, a series of low book-cases with glass fronts,
in which, according to where they stood, by a law of nature which he had,
perhaps, forgotten to take into account, was reflected this or that
section of the ever-changing view of the sea, so that the walls were lined
with a frieze of seascapes, interrupted only by the polished mahogany of
the actual shelves. And so effective was this that the whole room had the
appearance of one of those model bedrooms which you see nowadays in
Housing Exhibitions, decorated with works of art which are calculated by
their designer to refresh the eyes of whoever may ultimately have to sleep
in the rooms, the subjects being kept in some degree of harmony with the
locality and surroundings of the houses for which the rooms are planned.
And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real
Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had often dreamed, on stormy
days, when the wind was so strong that Francoise, as she took me to the
Champs-Elysees, would warn me not to walk too near the side of the street,
or I might have my head knocked off by a falling slate, and would recount
to me, with many lamentations, the terrible disasters and shipwrecks that
were reported in the newspaper.
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