slept in a room on the second-floor of a Bloomsbury hotel that night;
and waking the next day at ten, ate with accursed shiverings in the cold
banqueting-room; went out then, and under drear low skies walked a long
way to the West district, accompanied all the time by a sound of
flapping flags--fluttering robes and rags--and grotesquely grim glimpses
of decay. It was pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base
_bizarrerie_ of the European clothes which I wore had become a perpetual
offence and mockery in my eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I set
out whither I knew that I should find such clothes as a man might wear:
to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston Square.
I found it open, and all the house, like most other houses, almost
carpeted with dead forms. I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, and
cast an eye about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums,
fierce-looking Caucasians in skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in green
cloak, a khalifa, three emirs in cashmere turbans, two tziganes, their
gaudy brown mortality more glaringly abominable than even the Western's.
I could recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I
soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried
inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted
with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips
and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken
chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets,
sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I
went from the house, I was bathed, anointed, combed, scented, and robed.
* * * * *
I have said to myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will
rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like
Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build
me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy
before the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and rough
frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl.
For there were many men to the eye: but there was One only, really: and
I was he. And always I knew it:--some faintest secret whisper which
whispered me: "_You_ are the Arch-one, the _motif_ of the world, Adam,
and the rest of men not much." And they are gone--all! all!--as no doubt
they deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there
|