"Come!" he said
abruptly, "let us drink! It is early --but let us drink. It is
indeed early," he continued, musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden
hammer, made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise
--"It is indeed early, but what matters it? let us drink! Let us
pour out an offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and
censers are so eager to subdue!" And, having made me pledge him in a
bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.
"To dream", he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the
magnificent vases --"to dream has been the business of my life. I have
therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the
heart of Venice could I have erected a better? You behold around
you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The
chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the
sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the
effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and
especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the
contemplation of the magnificent.
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