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Updated: June 5, 2025
I dreamed that I sat on the throne of the Abencerrages in the banqueting hall of the Alhambra, feasting my lords and generals, who next day were to follow the crescent against the Christian dogs of Spain. The air, cooled by the spray of fountains, was heavy with the scent of flowers.
To-day's carouse will not empty it; there will be enough for to-morrow. He forgets to-morrow's headaches; he forgets that on some tomorrow the wine will be finished; he forgets that the fingers of a hand may write the doom of the rioters on the very walls of the banqueting chamber.
The very rabble, with which these pillared lounging places swarm, looked on him with a suspicious and half contemptuous eye; that insolently inquired what business had he there? Were the slaves and menials of Maecenas such? Was it thus at the Augustan court; when the lord of the conquered world sat banqueting with Virgil on his right hand and Horace on his left?
In January, 1649, Charles I., of England, was beheaded in front of his own banqueting hall, and England became nominally a republic. The event created the most profound sensation throughout all Christendom. The shock, which agitated all Europe, was felt in America.
It had become warm and comfortable by this time; its family portraits and tarnished splendour looked their best in the bright, soft light, which had chased away the dark shadows and given a new beauty to everything it fell upon; the whole place was metamorphosed; a festive air prevailed, and the ancient banqueting hall once more resounded with cheery voices and gay laughter.
Although it lacked the splendid proportions of the banqueting hall at Dominey, it was still a fine apartment, furnished in the Georgian period, with some notable pictures upon the walls, and with a wonderful ceiling and fireplace. Dominey and Rosamund dined alone, and though the table had been reduced to its smallest proportions, the space between them was yet considerable.
For "their churches and cathedrals," said B., "they had painted all those virgins and martyrs and over-fed angels that you see everywhere about Europe. For their bedrooms, they ordered those well, those bedroom sort of pictures, that you may have noticed here and there; and then I expect they used these victual-and-drink-scapes for their banqueting halls.
"Aha, the women!" cried a ragged fellow, turning about, "'tis their turn let us to the women " But a strong hand caught and set him aside and Beltane strode on before them all, treading swift and light until he was come to the chapel that stood beside the banqueting hall.
Priestly, we went over all the habitable and uninhabitable parts of the house: the banqueting room, with a most costly, frightful ceiling, and a chimneypiece carved up to the cornice with monsters, one with a nose covered with scales, one with human face on a tarantula's body.
When the more necessary but, as most hold, the less delightful part of banqueting was over, and the numerous serving-men had removed the more numerous dishes of wild boar, red deer, roebuck, and winged game, a stiff Calvinistic-looking personage rose and delivered a long and most grateful grace, to which the sturdy huntsmen listened with a due mixture of piety and impatience.
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