He
remembered that the bed stood in a gorgeous room, heavy with
magnificent tapestry and roofed with a carved and painted ceiling
that glittered with gilt and stars. Curtains of purple velvet
admitted the daylight through windows on which rich armorial
bearings glowed in coloured glass. Soft and delicate odours
impregnated the atmosphere and tender strains of delicate music
stole wooingly on the senses from the strings of a distant lute.
Then there carne, so kindly memory assured him, an obsequious man in
black, with no less obsequious attendants, and singular ceremonies
of bathing, perfuming and hair dressing and a putting on of sweet
linen and furred raiment and jewels, and all the ceremonials for the
transfiguration of a ragged robin into the likeness of a mighty
lord. On the top of all this preparation rose the sun of a splendid
banquet, served in ware of gold and silver and waited on by the same
obsequious figure in black and the same respectful pages. Then
followed the summons to walk into the air, the procession through
quiet corridors on to the cool grey terrace and the final
installment in the scented solitude of the rose garden.
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