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Updated: May 8, 2025
Every piece of furniture here was a work of art in its way: console-tables of Florentine mosaic, inlaid with pearl and lapis-lazuli; cabinets in which the exquisite designs of the Renaissance were carved in ebony; colossal vases of Russian malachite, but wrought by French artists.
The walls of the rooms in the palaces are covered with such stones as agates, onyxes, jasper, cornelian, lapis-lazuli, etc., inlaid in mosaic work, representing flowers, birds, arabesques, and other figures. Two rooms without windows are exclusively destined to show the effects of illumination.
Solemn and serene the distant Alps lifted their glittering domes, which cut sharply like crystal against the sky that was as deeply, darkly blue as lapis-lazuli; and behind the white villas dotting the shore, vineyards bowed in amber and purple fruitage, plentiful as Eshcol, luscious as Schiraz.
There is an elegant lapis-lazuli necklace, there are some curious Egyptian bracelets, with scarabæi that will render her the envy of her little world. There are some unset emeralds, opals, and various curious gems of more value to a cabinet than to a woman of fashion. A few diamonds and sapphires, but these he shall save for Cecil. Laura helps herself plentifully, and Marcia is tempted by a few.
The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx.
The golden sunshine, alternating with purple shadows, was lying in broad tracts on meadow and moor, and lighting up the forest trees so that the delicate tints and foliage of bough and branch came out in photographic clearness; the river, where it caught the sun like a belt of silver, where it was under the shadow like a band of lapis-lazuli, ran like a vein of life through the scene, and its music could be heard here where they stood; close at hand the old gray ivy-covered ruins, with their stories and memories of bygone times, seemed to add to the vivid fervor of the moment by the force of contrast that past so drear and old, the present so full of passionate hope and love; while the shadows of things that had once been real trooped among the ruins and flitted in and out the desert places, chased by laughing girls and merry children, as life chases death, youth drives out age, and the summer rises from the grave of winter.
The white is made of gypsum, mixed with albumen or honey; the yellows are ochre, or sulphuret of arsenic, the orpiment of our modern artists; the reds are ochre, cinnabar, or vermilion; the blues are pulverised lapis-lazuli, or silicate of copper. If the substance was rare or costly, a substitute drawn from the products of native industry was found.
But at that time it was a glittering fabric of mosaic work, in gold, lapis-lazuli, and precious stones, aided here and there by fragments of coloured glass, the only part of the costly workmanship that has come down to us. Around this shrine the preceding members of the procession had taken their places.
The widow and the steward of the wealthy Superior of the temple of Hatasu, and with them a priest of high rank, were in eager discussion with the officials of the embalming-House, and were selecting the most costly of the patterns of mummy-cases which were offered to their inspection, the finest linen, and amulets of malachite, and lapis-lazuli, of blood-stone, carnelian and green felspar, as well as the most elegant alabaster canopi for the deceased; his body was to be enclosed first in a sort of case of papier-mache, and then in a wooden and a stone coffin.
Then there were four chariots plated with gold and six chariots of gold, iron armour inlaid with gold, a jug of silver, a golden helmet inlaid with lapis-lazuli, wine, honey and balsam, ivory and various kinds of wood, wheat in such quantities that it could not be measured, and the sixty-five slaves who had to be furnished each year as part of the annual tax.
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