"'Tis not an altogether unfitting retreat for a poet's musings"-- he said, assuming an air of indifference, as he glanced round his luxurious, almost royally appointed room--"I have heard of worse! --But truly it needs the highest art of all known nations to worthily deck a habitation wherein the divine Muse may daily dwell, ... nevertheless, air, light, and flowers are not lacking, and on these methinks I could subsist, were I deprived of all other things!"
Theos sat silent, looking about him wistfully. 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.
He felt half blinded with the brilliancy of the scene,--the dazzling glow of color,--the sheen of deep and delicate hues cunningly intermixed and contrasted,--the gorgeous lavishness of waving blossoms that seemed to surge up like a sea to the very windows,--and though many thoughts flitted hazily through his brain, he could not shape them into utterance. He stared vaguely at the floor,--it was paved with variegated mosaic and strewn with the soft, dark, furry skins of wild animals,--at a little distance from where he sat there was a huge bronze lectern supported by a sculptured griffin with horns,--horns which curving over at the top, turned upward again in the form of candelabra,--the harp- bearer had brought in the harp, and it now stood in a conspicuous position decked with myrtle, some of the garlands woven by the maidens being no doubt used for this purpose.
Yet there was something mirage-like and fantastic in the splendor that everywhere surrounded him,--he felt as though he were one of the spectators in a vast auditorium where the curtain had just risen on the first scene of the play He was dubiously considering in his own perplexed mind, whether such princely living were the privilege, or right, or custom of poets in general, when Sah-luma spoke again, waving his hand toward one of the busts near him--a massive, frowning head, magnificently sculptured.