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The mask-ball was a very great affair indeed when it came off which it did at the country residence of the French consul. The mansion, which was Mauresque in style, was splendidly decorated with flags of various nations, and the skiffa, with its sparkling fountain and graceful palmettas, was a perfect blaze of variegated lamps.
In the distance he could now perceive the mauresque pinnacles that crowned his palazzo, and he was sadder than ever. The Duchess' gondola had vanished in the Canareggio. These fantastic pictures of a romantic and perilous existence, as the outcome of his love, went out with his cigar, and his lady's gondola no longer traced his path.
The churches at Lisieux are scarcely as interesting to us as its domestic architecture; but we must not neglect to examine the pointed Gothic of the 13th century in the cathedral of St. Pierre. The door of the south transept, and one of the doors under the western towers (the one on the right hand) is very beautiful, and is quite mauresque in the delicacy of its design. The interior is of fine proportions, but is disfigured with a coat of yellow paint; whilst common wooden seats (of churchwardens' pattern) and wainscotting have been built up against its pillars, the stone work having been cut away to accommodate the painted wood. There are some good memorial windows; one of Henry II. being married to Eleanor ; and another of Thomas-
Above this, to the stalactite cornice, the walls were decorated with intricate Mauresque designs in carved white plaster, while the rich stalactite roofing of deep-red tone, just tipped with purple and gilt, made a perfect whole, and gave a feeling of repose to the design.
This seems all the less doubtful because all the Mauresque Virgins are thick-set and heavy; they are not sylphs, like the fair Virgins of Gothic art. The Byzantine School conceived of Mary as swarthy, 'of the hue of polished brown ebony, as the old historians say; only, in opposition to the text in Canticles, it painted or carved Her as black, indeed, but not comely.
The chief entrance, like that of Sevílle, is a curious attempt to blend Roman architecture with Mauresque, having been restored in 1377, but the result is not bad. Recent "restorations" are observable in some parts of the mosque, hideous with colour, but a few of the original beams are still visible.
We might, indeed, if we chose to make the comparison for a moment between Christian and Mahommedan art, see a higher principle at work in the construction of the mosques and palaces of the Moors, where simplicity, refinement, and truth are noticeable in every line; we might see it in mauresque work, in the absence of grotesque images, or the imitation of living things in ornament; but, above all, in the severe simplicity and grandeur of their exteriors, and in the decoration, colour, and gilding of their interior courts alone, carrying out, in short, the true meaning of the words that, the king's daughter should be 'all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold.
Her feet were encased in the embroidered pointed slippers and the skirt of her costume, curiously wrought with arabesques in silver, fell to her ankles. The deep metallic blue vest embroidered with silver and the short Mauresque jacket spangled and sewn with turquoises became her wonderfully. She came up to me and held up her face smiling.
On wet days there was art needlework, for which Miss Wendover had what artists would call a great deal of feeling, without being very skilful as an executant. Under her direction, Ida began a mauresque border for a tawny plush curtain which was to be a triumph of art when completed, and which was full of interest in progress.
He then went to kneel before the Black Virgin, and returning to the North transept near which She stands, he gazed once more in amazement at the incandescent flowers of the windows; again he was captivated and moved by the five pointed windows under the rose, in which, on each side of the Mauresque Saint Anna, stood David and Solomon, a forbidding pair, in a furnace of purple, and Melchizedec and Aaron with tawny complexions and hairy faces, with enormous colourless eyes standing out passionless in a blaze of daylight.
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