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Jean-Martial Bineau, Polytechnicien and engineer from the Ecole des Mines, was – with Fould and Magne – one of the principal finance ministers during the Second Empire. Beginning his term of office on 22 January, 1852, he oversaw the conversion of the rente, brought in changes to budget voting rules (1852), successfully sponsored a law for civil pensions for civil servants (1853) and adopted the principle of public subscription for national bonds (emprunts publics), made necessary by the Crimean War (1854). Exhausted and ill, Bineau left rue de Rivoli in November 1854. During his stay in the South of France, all of his possessions were deposited in his private apartment at the Finance Ministry. On his death, on 10 September, 1855, his heirs established an inventory of his estate. It is this document which is here transcribed and annotated. It gives a detailed view of the private apartment of a minister at the heart of the ministry itself and also of the furniture and furnishings typifying the daily life and taste of a mid-19th-century upper-middle-class gentleman. The article ends with a comparative study of these objects and those appearing in the inventories of his colleague in the Navy Ministry, Ducos, and other upper-middle-class figures from Paris and Rouen.