Was he sane--was he sleeping? Had he drank too much wine at the Golden

Crown, and had it all gone to his head? Was it a scene of earnest

enchantment, or were fairy-tales true? Like Abou Hasson when he awoke

in the palace of the facetious Caliph of Bagdad, he had no notion of

believing his own eyes and ears, and quietly concluded it was all an

optical illusion, as ghosts are said to be; but he quietly resolved to

stay there, nevertheless, and see how the dazzling phantasmagoria would

end. The music was certainly ravishing, and it seemed to him, as he

listened with enchanted ears, that he never wanted to wake up from so

heavenly a dream.

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One thing struck him as rather odd; strange and bewildered as everything

was, it did not seem at all strange to him, on the contrary, a vague

idea was floating mistily through his mind that he had beheld precisely

the same thing somewhere before. Probably at some past period of his

life he had beheld a similar vision, or had seen a picture somewhere

like it in a tale of magic, and satisfying himself with this conclusion,

he began wondering if the genii of the place were going to make their

appearance at all, or if the knowledge that human eyes were upon them

had scared them back to Erebus.

While still ruminating on this important question, a portion of the

tapestry, almost beneath him, shriveled up and up, and out flocked a

glittering throng, with a musical mingling of laughter and voices. Still

they came, more and more, until the great room was almost filled, and

a dazzling throng they were. Sir Norman had mingled in many a brilliant

scene at Whitehall, where the gorgeous court of Charles shown in all its

splendor, with the "merry monarch" at their head, but all he had ever

witnessed at the king's court fell far short of this pageant. Half

the brilliant flock were ladies, superb in satins, silks, velvets and

jewels. And such jewels! every gem that ever flashed back the sunlight

sparkled and blazed in blending array on those beautiful bosoms and

arms--diamonds, pearls, opals, emeralds, rubies, garnets, sapphires,

amethysts--every jewel that ever shone. But neither dresses nor gems

were half so superb as the peerless forms they adorned; and such an army

of perfectly beautiful faces, from purest blonde to brightest brunette,

had never met and mingled together before.

Each lovely face was unmasked, but Sir Norman's dazzled eyes in vain

sought among them for one he knew. All that "rosebud garden of girls"

were perfect strangers to him, but not so the gallants, who fluttered

among them like moths around meteors. They, too, were in gorgeous array,

in purple and fine linen, which being interpreted, signifieth in silken

hose of every color under the sun, spangled and embroidered slippers

radiant with diamond buckles, doublets of as many different shades as

their tights, slashed with satin and embroidered with gold. Most of them

wore huge powdered wigs, according to the hideous fashion then in vogue,

and under those same ugly scalps, laughed many a handsome face Sir

Norman well knew. The majority of those richly-robed gallants were

strangers to him as well as the ladies, but whoever they were, whether

mortal men or "spirits from the vasty deep," they were in the tallest

sort of clover just then. Evidently they knew it, too, and seemed to be

on the best of terms with themselves and all the world, and laughed,

and flirted, and flattered, with as mach perfection as so many ball-room

Apollos of the present day.




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