The only exception to the complete re-organization of the interior
was at one extremity of the edifice, on the first and second floors.
Here there happened, in each case, to be rooms of such comparatively
moderate size, and so attractively decorated, that the architect
suggested leaving them as they were. It was afterwards discovered
that these were no other than the apartments formerly occupied
by Lord Montbarry (on the first floor), and by Baron Rivar
(on the second). The room in which Montbarry had died was still fitted
up as a bedroom, and was now distinguished as Number Fourteen.
The room above it, in which the Baron had slept, took its place
on the hotel-register as Number Thirty-Eight. With the ornaments on
the walls and ceilings cleaned and brightened up, and with the heavy
old-fashioned beds, chairs, and tables replaced by bright, pretty,
and luxurious modern furniture, these two promised to be at once
the most attractive and the most comfortable bedchambers in the hotel.
As for the once-desolate and disused ground floor of the building,
it was now transformed, by means of splendid dining-rooms, reception-rooms,
billiard-rooms, and smoking-rooms, into a palace by itself.
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