Chairs of golden wire completed the
furniture of this unequaled apartment.
The hangings of the walls were a freak at once of genius and lavishness.
They consisted of the bills of the Valley Bank, extravagantly lapped,
and of untold denomination. But the ceiling--how shall I describe it?
Did you, indeed, look up inimitably into a Hesperian sky, or was this
firmament the creation of the painter's art? Nothing flecked the
profound, unsearchable, impassive blue. There brooded the primeval
heavens, undimmed by earthly vapors, unfathomed by earthly instruments;
forever indescribable by earthly tongues.
Two hundred years before, a Pont-Noir of the Roseton branch accumulated
immense wealth from a diamond mine in East Haddam, Connecticut. He was a
man of deep and ardent imagination, and uncomprehended by the simple
villagers, who irreverently styled him the 'mad Roseton.' He died, and
left a singular will. It provided that his estates, money, and jewels,
should be realized and invested on interest for the space of two hundred
years, by a committee of trustees, consisting of the governors of the
six New England States, to be assisted by the fiscal board of
Mississippi, whenever such a State should be organized.
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