I judge from this circumstance, as well as
from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had
not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the
architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had
been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the
decora of what is technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of
nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon
none --neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the
sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of
untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled
to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to
be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting
perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers, together with
multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and violet
fire. The rays of the newly, risen sun poured in upon the whole,
through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson-tinted
glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains
which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver,
the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the
artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of
rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.
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