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Pictures of vague or enigmatic subject, or no subject at all, like Giorgione's Fête Champêtre and Soldier and Gipsy, Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, The Three Ages of Man, and various smaller pictures by Bonifazio, Palma, Basaiti; pictures of young men in velvets and brocades, solemn women with only the glory of their golden hair and flesh, seated in the grass, old men looking on pensive, children rolling about; with the solemnity of great, spreading trees, of greenish evening skies: the pathos of the song about to begin or just finished, lute or viol or pipe still lying hard by.

A paving-stone crashed through its heavy window. A knife ripped up the velvets of the cushions. The coachman was pulled from his box. The horses, plunging with terror, were cut loose from the pole and led away.

Early on the next day there arrived, from various quarters of the town, rich presents of silks, velvets, jewellery, and so forth, for Rose; and also a packet directed to Gerard Douw, which, on being opened, was found to contain a contract of marriage, formally drawn up, between Wilken Vanderhausen of the Boom-quay, in Rotterdam, and Rose Velderkaust of Leyden, niece to Gerard Douw, master in the art of painting, also of the same city; and containing engagements on the part of Vanderhausen to make settlements upon his bride, far more splendid than he had before led her guardian to believe likely, and which were to be secured to her use in the most unexceptionable manner possible the money being placed in the hands of Gerard Douw himself.

As for the streets, they were hung from their upper windows with the richest tapestries; silks, damasks, velvets, and goldsmiths' work were displayed in the richest abundance; the most costly valuables exposed, almost at the mercy of jostling wayfarers; banners flaunting overhead, and casting fleeting shadows beneath.

Rich velvets, brilliant satins, cloth of silver and gold, misty laces, gay ribbons, white feathers, tiaras of diamonds, strings of pearls, superb jewels, glittering in delicate shell-like ears, on white necks and rounded arms, were in profusion, and the scene would have graced the court itself.

Everywhere the eye was arrested by the luxury of stuffs, the brilliance and delicacy of fabrics, laces as white and soft as froth, crisp, shining silks, suave satins, heavy gleaming velvets, and brocades and plushes, nearly all of them white violently so dazzling and splendid under the blaze of the electrics.

Then truly that temper of mine, which I have had some cause to lament, and yet I know not if it be aught I can help, it being seemingly as beyond the say of my own will as the recoil of a musket or the rebound of a ball, sent me forth into the midst of that gallant throng, and I would not say for certain, but at this late date I am inclined to believe that I saw Ralph Drake, who came in my way with a storm of curses, raising himself sorely from a pool of mud, which must have worked havoc with his velvets, and my Lord Estes struggling forth from a thorny rose bush at the gate, with much rending of precious laces.

Every mountain was a cultivated forest, from which they obtained every variety of fabric; silks, satins, velvets, laces, woolen goods, and the richest articles of beauty and luxury, in which to array themselves, were put upon the market at a trifling cost, compared to what they were manufactured at in my own country.

It was in reality a palace filled with carpets, gilt furniture, marbles, mirrors, silks, velvets, carvings, etc., etc. Hot water ran in silver pipes to my very bedside. The perfumed baths were perpetually renewed. When it rained daily I walked in a glass pavilion filled with scented flowers. I inhabited here ten days. Though I was utterly useless they were unwearied of me.

People told each other, too, that the conqueror had refused a triumph which the burghers of Brussels wished to prepare for him on his entrance into the capital, and that he had administered the very proper rebuke that, if they had more money than they knew what to do with, they should expend it in aid of the wounded and of the families of the fallen, rather than in velvets and satins and triumphal arches.