Poor Tom!

The morning after we got home from Tunisia, Tom left for a 4 day meeting at this château.

This was Tom's front door...

The main hallway...

Jules Porges built this spectacular château in Rochefort-en-Yvelines for his wife and daughter in the late 1800's.  He descended from a prominent Austro-Hungarian family.  He was born in Vienna and was raised in Prague, where his father was a master jeweler. By the 1860s he had settled in Paris where he quickly established himself  in the diamond trade and founded Jules Porges & Company.  The château is located about 40 minutes south of Paris.