A mixture of styles
is confusedly employed. As there is no longer a real court or nobility
to give the tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never,
on the other hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways
of imitating the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more
talent, in distributing them. Propose to an architect to build upon
the garden at the back of an old mansion, and he will run you up a
little Louvre overloaded with ornament. He will manage to get in a
courtyard, stables, and if you care for it, a garden. Inside the house
he will accommodate a quantity of little rooms and passages. He is so
clever in deceiving the eye that you think you will have plenty of
space; but it is only a nest of small rooms, after all, in which a
ducal family has to turn itself about in the space that its own
bakehouse formerly occupied.
The hotel of the Comtesse Laginska, rue de la Pepiniere, is one of
these creations, and stands between court and garden. On the right, in
the court, are the kitchens and offices; to the left the coachhouse
and stables. The porter's lodge is between two charming portes-
cocheres. The chief luxury of the house is a delightful greenhouse
contrived at the end of a boudoir on the ground-floor which opens upon
an admirable suite of reception rooms.
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