The Count of Monte Cristo

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free, and, like that famous portal in the "Arabian Nights," opening at
the "Sesame" of Ali Baba, it was wont to swing backward at a cabalistic
word or a concerted tap from without from the sweetest voices or whitest
fingers in the world. At the end of a long corridor, with which the
door communicated, and which formed the ante-chamber, was, on the right,
Albert's breakfast-room, looking into the court, and on the left the
salon, looking into the garden. Shrubs and creeping plants covered the
windows, and hid from the garden and court these two apartments, the
only rooms into which, as they were on the ground-floor, the prying eyes
of the curious could penetrate. On the floor above were similar rooms,
with the addition of a third, formed out of the ante-chamber;
these three rooms were a salon, a boudoir, and a bedroom. The salon
down-stairs was only an Algerian divan, for the use of smokers. The
boudoir up-stairs communicated with the bed-chamber by an invisible door
on the staircase; it was evident that every precaution had been taken.
Above this floor was a large atelier, which had been increased in size
by pulling down the partitions--a pandemonium, in which the artist and