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It cannot be denied that Ahmed in the course of years became much more extravagant and luxurious, but he used his large means in some measure for the betterment of the country. He gave large sums not only for the erection of palaces and barracks, but also for hospitals and educational advancement.

It is late afternoon. The western sun lies dying in a mass of yellow and soft brown clouds. On the high walls of the great white station its rays fall with startling brightness and cast long shadows of waiting gondoliers upon the plaza floor. The white palaces opposite are shrouded in somber hues. A warm mist seems to rise from the water. All is still as in the mid-Atlantic.

Nothing was concealed, but rather displayed with a half-cynical pride. All was moth-ridden, worm-eaten, fallen to decay but it was of the Monarchy. Not half a dozen houses in Paris, where already the wealth, which has to-day culminated in a ridiculous luxury of outward show, was beginning to build new palaces, could show room after room furnished in the days of the Great Louis.

And now, indeed, she had something to use it on, for she found herself in what seemed to be a perfectly gorgeous palace, or rather two or three palaces joined together, all built of gold and silver, with arches and pillars of crystal, large halls with walls of burnished copper, and beautiful rooms inlaid with precious marbles.

Beneath his eyes, bathed in moonlight, lay a fortified inclosure, from which rose two cathedrals, three palaces, and an arsenal.

Or they seemed to have wandered, by some strange chance, out of the common world, and encountered each other in a depopulated city, where there were streets of lonely palaces, and unreckonable treasures of beautiful and admirable things, of which they two became the sole inheritors.

It is customary for the native princes to keep a dalang at their palaces; in this case, of course, the figures and gamelan do not belong to the dalang, but to the prince.

A visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years fly the British flag over the Agencies.

The palaces and marble stairs of old Venice are no longer desolate, but thronged with scarlet-robed senators, prisoners with the doom of the Ten upon their heads cross the Bridge of Sighs, at dead of night the nun slips out of the convent gate to the dark canal where a gondola is waiting, we assist at the 'parties fines' of cardinals, and we see the bank made at faro.

For any foreign court to harbor a pretender to the British crown, when there was an established government in England based on a determination of the people to abrogate royalty altogether, was to incur very considerable political danger. Charles soon found that, under these circumstances, he was not likely to be long a very welcome guest in the French palaces.