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Picking his way daintily through that shambles in the waist came a tall man with a deeply tanned face that was shaded by a Spanish headpiece. He was armed in back-and-breast of black steel beautifully damascened with golden arabesques. Over this, like a stole, he wore a sling of scarlet silk, from each end of which hung a silver-mounted pistol.
A dim and subtly perfumed corridor opened out before them, its walls hung with tapestries, between which, by the light of sandal-oil mash'als, or cressets, the glimmer of the dull-gold walls could be distinguished. Pillars rose to the roof, and these were all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with fine copper and silver arabesques of amazing complexity.
We find three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to different depths; first, Time, which has made insensible breaches here and there, mildewed and rusted the surface everywhere; then, political and religious revolutions, which, blind and fierce by nature, fell furiously upon it, rent its rich array of sculpture and carving, shivered its rose-windows, shattered its necklaces of arabesques and quaint figures, tore down its statues sometimes because of their crown; lastly, changing fashion, even more grotesque and absurd, from the anarchic and splendid deviations of the Renaissance down to the necessary decline of architecture.
The befrogged officer is no longer limited in the arabesques of braid and tinsel that make gay his manly breast. He commands all the resources of Snip's imagination, and whirligigs beyond what hath entered the mind of man to conceive will shortly meander over the cerulean expanse. Is there not a lull in the quack-medicine business?
The leaping of the flames on the hearth made quaint arabesques of shadow on the rough walls and the wind sighed and sobbed in the chimney. Thus they sat for an hour or two in silence and then Seagreave lifted his eyes and stole one of his swift and frequent glances at Pearl.
The whole of the east side is occupied by the refectory, about 100 feet long by 30 wide. On each of the long sides there is a pulpit, one bearing the date 1536, enriched with arabesques, angels, and small columns. At the south end are two windows, and at the north a hatch communicating with the kitchen.
On the first floor of a large hotel, formerly occupied, perhaps, by a farmer-general, you enter a suite of apartments, decorated with arabesques, and mirrors of large dimensions, in a style no less elegant than splendid, where tables are completely arranged for large or small parties. In winter, these rooms are warmed by ornamental stoves, and lighted by quinquets, a species of Argand's lamps.
It is all over marble, maplewood, looking-glasses, arabesques, ormolu, and scagliola. Scrolls, ciphers, dragons, Cupids, polyanthuses, and other flowers writhe up the walls in every kind of cornucopiosity. Fancy every gentleman in Jullien's band playing with all his might, and each performing a different tune; the ornaments at our Club, the 'Sarcophagus, so bewilder and affect me.
Passing all these, passing also the flower-beds choked with brambles and long waving grasses, and the once quaintly-clipped myrtle and box-trees, all flinging out fantastic arms of later growth, we came to the upper terrace, which was paved in curious patterns of stars and arabesques, with stones alternately round and flat.
The scraps of cambric had been gathered up from the threadbare arabesques in the carpet; the chairs had been placed at respectable distances apart; the gas-jets in the chandelier were flaming extravagantly under the damaged garlands; and the sewing machine had been wheeled into the obscurity of the hail, for it would have humiliated Gabriella's mother to think that her daughter received young men in a room which looked as if somebody had worked there.
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