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Many changes have been made, but the imperial palace, was, as it is to-day, a ruin; between the overthrown marble columns and over the ruined bath-rooms, whose walls were still decorated with gold, grew fig and laurel trees. The Colosseum was a ruin; the church bells rang, the incense arose and processions passed through the streets with tapers and gorgeous canopies.
The grand staircase is elaborately ornamented with niches and canopies, and with tracery under the landings; and in the principal ceiling, which is surmounted with a double skylight of various coloured glass. The state bed-room is lighted by two painted windows, with tracery and armorial bearings.
Couches, chairs, canopies were cut and torn as if they had been lunged at with swords. Two spare chambers for guests were all in confusion. They then ascended to the second story.
Their freshness and fragrance gave a brightness to the whole scene, while shrinking from such light, as only the beauteous works of nature could bear, was the array accomplished by female fingers. Under the wreathed canopies were the stalls, piled up with bright colours, most artistically arranged.
Outside the tent itself large canopies of canvas had been erected to shelter the Iroquois from the sun, while Frontenac, in his most brilliant military costume, assumed all the state he could. In treating with Indians haste was impossible, nor did Frontenac desire that the speech-making should begin at once.
The kings and people of the countries around vied with one another in their offerings, hanging up about it silken streamers and canopies, scattering flowers, burning incense, and lighting lamps, so as to make the night as bright as the day. This they did day after day without ceasing.
They are now in the process of being cleaned, and each niche is elaborately inlaid with precious marbles, and some of them magnificently gilded; and they are all surmounted with marble canopies as light and graceful as frost-work. Within stand statues, St. George, and many other saints, by Donatello and others, and all taking a hold upon one's sympathies, even if they be not beautiful.
Shrines, canopies, censers, all the objects carried in the procession, have disappeared into the churches. The church doors are locked, and the images are left to stand all night without so much as one solitary worshipper kneeling before them. The Bourg is empty and dark, steeped in black shadows at the door of the chapel where the relic has been laid to rest.
There were monuments, too, in memory of the Courtenays: stone effigies of knights in armour, lying under carved canopies emblazoned with their coats-of-arms; stiff ladies and gentlemen of Tudor times, with starched ruffs and buckled shoes; and one lovely marble figure, by a forgotten sculptor, of a young daughter of the house who had perished during the Great Plague.
At a distance of three or four li from the city, they made a four-wheeled image car, more than thirty cubits high, which looked like the great hall of a monastery moving along. The seven precious substances were grandly displayed about it, with silken streamers and canopies hanging all around.
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