The carpet was of white velvet--(laid over several webs of Aubusson,
Ispahan, and Axminster, so that your foot gave no more sound as it trod
upon the yielding plain than the shadow did which followed you)--of
white velvet, painted with flowers, arabesques, and classic figures, by
Sir William Ross, J. M. W. Turner, R. A., Mrs. Mee, and Paul Delaroche.
The edges were wrought with seed-pearls, and fringed with Valenciennes
lace and bullion. The walls were hung with cloth of silver, embroidered
with gold figures, over which were worked pomegranates, polyanthuses,
and passion-flowers, in ruby, amethyst, and smaragd. The drops of dew
which the artificer had sprinkled on the flowers were diamonds. The
hangings were overhung by pictures yet more costly. Giorgione the
gorgeous, Titian the golden, Rubens the ruddy and pulpy (the Pan of
Painting), some of Murillo's beatified shepherdesses, who smile on you
out of darkness like a star, a few score first-class Leonardos, and
fifty of the master-pieces of the patron of Julius and Leo, the Imperial
genius of Urbino, covered the walls of the little chamber. Divans of
carved amber covered with ermine went round the room, and in the midst
was a fountain, pattering and babbling with jets of double-distilled
otto of roses.
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