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When she lay down again, sleep was banished. She lit a candle and waited for the dawn. There in the flickering light were the old tapestries the princess stepping into her boat, Diana ranging through the wood. Nothing was changed in the room or its furniture.

And by the overland northern route from Peking, by painful and dangerous stages through Turkestan to Yarkand, Bokhara, and Tabriz came the products of China and Persia, silks and fabrics, rich tapestries and priceless rugs. From the twelfth century Italian cities grew rich and powerful on the carrying trade between western Europe and the Levant.

In that room, the old withdrawing-room of the Elizabethan wing where once had been the embroideries, tapestries, and missals of beruffled dames were now books, pamphlets, oak-panels, pipes, fencing gear, and along one wall a collection of Red Indian weapons and ornaments brought back by Miltoun from the United States.

The old mahogany doors were spared, but matched now by Chippendale and Sheraton; the new, polished floors were covered with Oriental rugs, the dreary Durrett pictures replaced by good canvases and tapestries.

The streets were strewn with boughs, the walls of the houses hung with showy tapestries, and triumphal arches were thrown over the way in honor of the victor. Every balcony, veranda, and house-top was crowded with spectators, who sent up huzzas, loud and long, saluting the victorious soldier with the titles of "Liberator, and Protector of the people."

But within it is a fairy palace, hung with silk draperies, tapestries, and hand-painted curtains; the floors are covered with magnificent rugs from Persia and India, and the reception-room is crowded with treasures of ebony, ivory, lacquer work, and gold and silver. There were two thrones made of silver dragons, with many scales, and studded with jewels.

Giovanni painted the cartoons for those hangings and chamber-tapestries that were afterwards woven in silk and gold in Flanders, in which are certain little boys that are sporting around various festoons, and as ornaments the devices of Pope Leo and various animals copied from life. These tapestries, which are very rare works, are still in the Palace at the present day.

The High Altar was decorated by the "Tanta Monta" tapestries those famous hangings of the Catholic kings, with emblems and shields, given by Cisneros to the Cathedral.

In the midst of these festivities, Mazarin decided to invite the court to a grand ballet, which should transcend in splendor every thing which Paris had witnessed before. To decorate the saloons, a large amount of costly draperies were manufactured at Milan. In arranging these tapestries, by some accident they took fire.

But one should speak of them all gently and I do, from my soul; for their labour, by their lights, has wrought a precious heritage of still-living colour and rich figure-peopled shadow for the echoing chambers of their old civic fortress. The faded frescoes cover the walls like quaintly-storied tapestries; in one way or another they cast their spell.