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But these signs of war did not spoil the majesty of the tall columns and high roof, nor the loveliness of the sculptured flowers below the clerestory arches, nor the spiritual mystery of those great, dim aisles, where light flickered and shadows lurked, and the ghosts of history came out of their tombs to pace these stones again where five, six, seven centuries before they had walked to worship God, in joy or in despair, or to show their beauty of young womanhood peasant girl or princess to lovers gazing by the pillars, or to plight their troth as royal brides, or get a crown for their heads, or mercy for their dead bodies in velvet-draped coffins.
Was ever poet, king, or even emperor, housed more sumptuously than this, he thought? ... as his eyes wandered to the domed ceiling, wreathed with carved clusters of grapes and pomegranates, the walls, frescoed with glowing scenes of love and song-tournament, the groups of superb statuary that gleamed whitely out of dusky, velvet-draped corners, the quaintly shaped book-cases, overflowing with books, and made so as to revolve round and round at a touch, or move to and fro on noiseless wheels, the grand busts, both in bronze and marble, that stood on tall pedestals or projecting bracket; and, while he dimly noted all these splendid evidences of unlimited wealth and luxury, the perfume and lustre of the place, the glitter of gold and azure, silver and scarlet, the oriental languor pervading the very air, and above all the rich amber and azure-tinted light that bathed every object in a dream-like and fairy radiance, plunged his senses into a delicious confusion, a throbbing fever of delight to which he could give no name, but which permeated every fibre of his being.
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