The salon was filled with the works of modern artists… all that modern art can give in exchange and as recompense for the art lost and gone with ages long since past.
The lush catalog of paintings isn’t just decoration—it’s a map of the Count’s curated identity. He buys not just objects, but a mood: taste that signals power without needing to brag. The passage shows how space can be rhetoric; rooms argue before people speak. Emotionally, the abundance feels dazzling and a little cold. It’s the grandeur he uses to both attract and disarm Paris. Readers sense the paradox of wealth: it can reveal culture and conceal motives. The art is armor as much as pleasure.