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The defeat of the Persians was complete, and the spoils which fell to the victors was immense—gold and silver, arms, carpets, clothing, horses, camels, and even the rich tent of Xerxes himself, left with Mardonius. The booty was distributed among the different contingents of the army.
The square was still, the house was still; when he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to let in the air he heard the slow creak of the boots of a lone constable. His own step, in the empty place, seemed loud and sonorous; some of the carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy echo.
The furniture looked poor, and the carpets almost threadbare; but there was such a dainty spirit of cleanliness abroad, such exquisite neatness of repair, and altogether so bright and cheerful a look about the rooms everything so above-board no shifts to conceal poverty under flimsy ornament that many a splendid drawing-room would give less pleasure to those who could see evidences of character in inanimate things.
I should lie awake all night wondering what tricks they'd be up to." "But you've left your house unprotected," said Mrs. Stobell. "The house won't run away," retorted her friend, "and I've sent all my valuables to the bank and to friends to take care of, and had all my carpets taken up and beaten and warehoused. I can't imagine what Mr. Stobell was thinking of not to let you do the same."
Shall not one cherish that which is his own, which cometh from seed to seed? Is it not the law? 'But, said I, 'if his wealth were thine, there would be herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, and carpets spread, and the banquet-tables, and great orchards. But she stubbornly shook her head. 'Where the eagle built shall not the young eagle nest?
Talmage defines home, as "a church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within a world." Dr. Banks writes, "It is not granite walls, or gaudy furniture, or splendid books, or soft carpets, or delicious viands that can make a home. All of these may be present, and yet it be only a dungeon, if the great simplicities are not there."
It held no vehicle of any sort, but it was a coach-house all the same. Inside the house everything was neat and clean, and to Paul's mind luxurious. There were carpets in all the living-rooms and bedrooms.
Some days after this strange night, which calls to mind the Roman evenings in the days of Tiberius, Nero, and Heliogabalus, Lucrezia, clad in a robe of golden brocade, her train carried by young girls dressed in white and crowned with roses, issued from her palace to the sound of trumpets and clarions, and made her way over carpets that were laid down in the streets through which she had to pass.
The carpets are often really handsome, because their design and manufacture is an art which is thoroughly understood in the East, and in more primitive days they would have formed almost the only furniture of a reception-hall.
In vases of delicate murra huge bunches of blood-red roses hung their drooping heads, and beneath the feet carpets of heavy silk hid the exquisite beauty of mosaics of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase. And in the midst of all this stately gorgeousness a creature hardly human raging round like a thwarted beast.
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