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On the edge of the platform a row of high-heeled leather sandals stood ranged carefully in a level line, and against the rough wooden rail leaned the slender shafts of the spears belonging to these gentlemen, the broad blades of dulled steel looking very black in the reddening light of approaching sunset.
Presently two court officials entered and, placing a mantle of coarse cotton over Roger, signed to him to take off his sandals. Cacama had already informed him that even the highest nobles of the land, with the exception of those of royal blood, were obliged to enter Montezuma's presence in this attire, as emblematic of their humility.
A blood-stained coat had been thrown on the table, half a dough-cake lay beside a plucked and mangled crow with which to feed the hawk. Sandals of raw hide, a gun, a dagger, a little bag, wet clothes, and sundry rags lay scattered on the benches. In a corner stood a tub with stinking water, in which another pair of sandals were being steeped, and near by was a gun and a hunting-screen.
It was still his coarse woolen cassock, his hood, his sandals, and his rope, and he rode the same old mule with which his wanderings began. His army was not less than eighty thousand strong. But the camp followers were almost as many, made up of old men, women, and children. Peter's crazy faith promised food to all.
It is with some timidity even that he hazards a criticism upon single parts of the costume adopted by some of the actors in that gorgeous scene. White silk stockings, and pumps of the common form, he objects to as out of harmony with the antique and heraldic aspects of the general costume, and ventures to suggest either boots or sandals as an improvement.
"Look here!" he said abruptly, "I wish you'd lend me a pair of slippers, or something. I'm regular sick of these sandals. They're rotten things. I've been trying them for a friend." "Right O!" The ex-Rhodes scholar whisked out of the room and reappeared with a considerable choice of footwear pumps, cloth bath-slippers, and a purple pair adorned with golden sun-flowers.
And then the thousand details of preceding autumns in the Basque country, of the former Novembers, come to him very precisely; the cold fall of night succeeding the beautiful, sunlit day; the sad clouds appearing with the night; the Pyrenees confounded in vapors inky gray, or, in places, cut in black silhouettes on a pale, golden sky; around the houses, the belated flowers of the gardens, which the frost spares for a long time here, and, in front of all the doors, the strewn leaves of the plane-trees, the yellow strewn leaves cracking under the steps of the man returning in sandals to his home for supper.
The end wall is a silvery screen nearly as large as a pair of folding doors. The door is on your left as you face the screen; and there is a row of thick pegs, padded and covered with velvet, beside it. A stoutish middle-aged man, good-looking and breezily genial, dressed in a silk smock, stockings, handsomely ornamented sandals, and a gold fillet round his brows, comes in.
Then he rose, and did on his doublet about his breast, and beneath his shining feet he bound on fair sandals, and thereafter clad him in the tawny skin of a lion fiery and great, a skin that reached to the feet, and he grasped his spear. With a dappled pard's akin first he covered his broad shoulders, and he raised and set on his head a casque of bronze, and took a spear in his strong hand.
What was of greatest worth in them I presented to the sovereign, who was much pleased to hear of my good fortune, and gave me in return a gift of still greater value. Then I took leave of him, and went aboard the same ship after I had exchanged my goods for products of that country. I carried with me wood of aloes, sandals, camphire, nutmegs, cloves, pepper, and ginger.
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