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The number of souls embarked in this fleet was about twenty-five hundred; many of them persons of rank and distinction, with their families. That Ovando might appear with dignity in his new office, he was allowed to use silks, brocades, precious stones, and other articles of sumptuous attire, prohibited at that time in Spain, in consequence of the ruinous ostentation of the nobility.
Polk's social administration, we did not waltz, but our ball began with a stately march, really a grand procession, in its way distinctly interesting, in scarlet and gold and blue and silks, and all the flowered circumstance of brocades and laces of our ladies. And after our march we had our own polite Virginia reel, merry as any dance, yet stately too.
The feel of the crisp and whispering taffetas, the elevation of the brocades, the warm nothingness of the chiffons like wisps of fog, the rich dignity of the cloths, gave Kedzie rapture on rapture.
And I say once more, if your ladyship does not like to give me the island because I'm a fool, like a wise man I will take care to give myself no trouble about it; I have heard say that 'behind the cross there's the devil, and that 'all that glitters is not gold, and that from among the oxen, and the ploughs, and the yokes, Wamba the husbandman was taken to be made King of Spain, and from among brocades, and pleasures, and riches, Roderick was taken to be devoured by adders, if the verses of the old ballads don't lie."
Never, never had Sara been there; and she began immediately trying to build that lovely city in her mind the frail spires, and the rich bazaars, dusky and spicy and full of brocades and silks, and the little narrow, climbing streets. But, though it was a pleasure to try, she knew she could not imagine anything so strange and charming as the real City of Zinariola would be.
A knock at the bedroom door is followed by the entrance of two ladies, apparently mother and daughter; the former a portly and roseate dame, clad in the richest of brocades and white lace shawls the latter a thin and somewhat yellow damsel, a tired in white and pink bonnet and mantle to match, evidently in bridesmaid's gear.
Merchants arriving at the different Indian ports would often find that their own countrymen had been too quick for them, and that other fleets had got the wind out of their sails, that the eastern markets had been stripped, and that prices had gone up to a ruinous height, while on the other hand, in the Dutch cities, nutmegs and cinnamon, brocades and indigo, were as plentiful as red herrings.
There were silks and damasks and brocades; webbed tissues of the East, Coaen gauzes blue and green, Damascus purples, shot gold from Samarcand, crimson stuffs dipped in Syrian vats, rose-coloured silk from Trebizond, and embroidered jackets which smelt of Cairo or Bagdad, and glowed with the hues of Byzantium itself. Out of these she made choice.
And the belles were not to be outdone by the beaux. There were gowns of almost every degree of elegance, in brocades and glistening satins, wrought with roses or silver thread, turned back over beautiful petticoats.
Ostrander thought this gray-eyed, independent American-French girl far superior to the obsequious filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled through those quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her fellow pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the Louvre. Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the one-armed soldier-painter!
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