Life of Count Rumford. 427 



a park. Back of the main house is a structure of outbuildings 

 a which enclose a stable and coach-house, a chemical laboratory, 

 room for a valet, one for a carpenter, &c. The two buildings are 

 separated by a small garden, but there is a communication be- 

 tween them by a covered gallery, which is warmed in the win- 

 ter by pipes of hot air. 



" The agreeable and the useful have been combined in this 

 abode with much ingenuity and success. You divine at once 

 that everything that concerns the use of fuel, whether for the 

 kitchen or for warmth, has been carried to the highest degree 

 of economy and perfection. The mantel-piece in the rooms 

 makes no projection, and masked as it is in the summer by a 

 border of painted canvas, you confound it with one of the 

 panels of the wainscoting. These panels at the right and 

 the left of the fireplace are hung on sunken hinges, and you 

 raise one or the other of these, in the style of a table, when you 

 wish to write or read near the fire. The same arrangement is 

 adapted to the piers which separate the windows, and you can 

 at your will produce either a table or a simple panel, when you 

 allow it to fall back again. The wainscoting coming out flush 

 with the front of the throat of the chimney, it makes no farther 

 projection, and this arrangement furnishes in depth the neces- 

 sary place for setting closets, where clothing, books, and every- 

 thing which you wish to keep safe from dampness and dust, is 

 protected and disposed of invisibly. 



" The bedchambers are disguised in the same way, that is to 

 say, the bed is concealed under the form of an elegant sofa, of 

 which the seat is formed by one of the mattresses, and the 

 other is constructed in a way to fold up as with a hinge through 

 the length of the back part, and then contracts the bed by its 

 doubled thickness to the ordinary size of an ottoman. Two 

 cushions ornament the ends. Under the sofa are two large and 

 deep drawers which contain the bedding, coverlet, and night- 

 gear, and which are hidden by a fringed valance. In a few 

 minutes the sofa is converted at night into an excellent bed, and 

 in the morning the bed becomes for the day an ornamental 

 piece of furniture. 



