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The house was fitted up, too, in so strange a manner: hammocks slung to the walls, instead of bedsteads; odd kinds of furniture, of foreign fashion; bamboo couches, Spanish chairs; pistols, cutlasses, and blunderbusses, suspended on every peg; silver crucifixes on the mantel-pieces, silver candle-sticks and porringers on the tables, contrasting oddly with the pewter and Delf ware of the original establishment.
The former class were as candles, made of ordinary wax, and placed in inconspicuous candle-sticks, which had been ignited by the fire of God through the Holy Spirit; and the latter were like exquisitely prepared candlesticks, the candles in which had never been kindled by the fire of God.
The chief sideboard boasted not the tiniest bit of brass; even the handles were of cheap glass, and Clem had set candle-sticks upon it that were nothing but pewter. Where Little Arcady had looked for the best Brussels carpets, there came only dull-colored rugs of a most aged and depressing lack of gayety.
Some of the papers dating two or three centuries back, in which the style and the manners illustrated gave me considerable entertainment. Among the pieces of furniture on the floor I saw a warming-pan, a kettle, a fire-shovel, a pair of tongs, some old candle-sticks, some earthenware pots, and even a syringe.
"The seven candle-sticks which thou sawest are the seven churches." "The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings." "The waters which thou sawest ... are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." "The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth," etc.
In the centre of the mantel-piece, lying between two odd zinc candle-sticks, was a bundle of pink pawn-tickets. It was the best room of the hotel, the first floor room, looking on to the Boulevard. The two children were sleeping side by side, with their heads on the same pillow.
The carpet resembled an Oriental shawl, exhibiting the patterns and recalling the poetry of Persia, the land where it had been woven by the hands of slaves. The furniture was all upholstered in white cashmere, emphasised by trimmings of the same combination of black and poppy-red. The clock, the candle-sticks, all the ornaments, were of white marble and gold.
'Seven copies, he thought, 'have been sold. Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good. Let me find the seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they shall be the seven golden candle-sticks with which I will illuminate the world. Scythrop had a certain portion of mechanical genius, which his romantic projects tended to develope.
No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel in Bloomsbury: but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would be there, I was not sure that I should find sufficient: for I had acquired the habit within the past few months of sleeping with at least sixty lighted about me, and their form, pattern, style, age, and material was of no small importance I selected ten from the broken shop, eight gold and silver, and two of old ecclesiastical brass, and having made a bundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan Station, pumped it, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding.
I had brought candle-sticks from London in the morning, and arranged the furniture a settee, chest-of-drawers, basin-stand, table, and a number of chairs in three-quarter-circle round the bed, so getting a triple-row altar of lights, mixed with vases of the house containing small palms and evergreens; with this I mingled a smell of ambergris from the scattered contents of some Turkish sachets which I had; in the bed a bottle of sweet Chypre-wine, with bonbons, nuts, and Havannas.
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