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In a minute, in a second, she alighted and swept into the parlor, where six or eight brawling intruders sat on mahogany chairs and upholstered sofas, drinking wine and singing filthy songs. One fellow, maudlin from liquor, rolled on the Smyrna rug. Another was in the act of firing a bullet at the frescoed ceiling. "Robbers! Cowards! Beasts! Begone! Where is your commanding officer?

The Count looked down at that splendid, blood-spattered figure lying there so still, its sightless eyes staring up at the frescoed ceiling, so brave and so pitiful in his gold-broidered suit of white satin, with the richly jewelled girdle carrying gloves and purse and a jewelled dagger that had been so useless in that extremity.

Constituting a western wing of the old brick mansion which it adjoined, the entrance fronting north, opened from a portico with clustered columns, into a square vestibule; which led directly to a large, octagonal atrium, surrounded by lofty fluted pillars with foliated capitals that supported the arched and frescoed ceiling.

The houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin.

And there are chairs inlaid with mosaic and pearl, and upholstered with the richest and brightest satin damask, revealing, however, that uncouthness of taste so characteristic of your Fifth Avenue aristocrat. Now cast your eye upward to the ceiling. It is frescoed with themes of a barbaric age. The finely-outlined figure of a female adorns the centre.

So many of its windows have been blocked up by additions, and so cut up is its space by large frescoed pillars, into sixteen sections, that one steps from brilliant sunshine into deep twilight when he enters the cathedral. It is a sort of church which possesses in a high degree that indefinable charm of sacred atmosphere that tempts one to linger on and on indefinitely within its precincts.

"Nothing appears to be more strange," said George, "on looking at these frescoed paintings, and on such mosaics as we have yet seen; than the extraordinary familiarity of their subjects. "There are many depicted on these walls, and I do not think, Henry, we are first rate classics; and yet it would be difficult to puzzle us, in naming the story whence these frescoes have their birth.

We rang at the door, and after long delay a woman came and let us into an interior stranger ever than her being there as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to ceiling everywhere, except the places of the altars now kept by the painted retablos and the tombs and the statues of the various saints and heroes.

But she removed her coat and hat, and took her place with the other assistants upon the platform in the chapel of the academy where the morning exercises were held. She spoke to the other teachers, and took her usual seat. Wollaston was not yet there. The pupils were flocking into the room, which was picturesque with a dome-shaped ceiling, and really fine frescoed panels on the walls.

Even while he pronounced the words, a whirring rustle filled the beautiful oratory, and two of Leo's pet ring-doves, fluttering round and round the frescoed ceiling, descended swiftly. One perched upon her head, cooing softly, and its mate nestled down with outspread pinions, pecking at the white muslin folds on Doctor Douglass' shoulder. "Paracletes, dun plumed!