there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The
tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours and
effects. He disregarded the _decora_ of mere fashion. His plans were
bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There
are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he
was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be _sure_
that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven
chambers, upon occasion of this great _fete_; and it was his own guiding
taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were
grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and
phantasm--much of what has been since seen in "Hernani". There were
arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were
delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the
beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the _bizarre_, something of the
terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.
To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of
dreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about taking hue from
the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the
echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which
stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is
still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are
stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away--they
have endured but an instant--and a light, half-subdued laughter floats
after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the
dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue
from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the
tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven,
there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning
away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes;
and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot
falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a
muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches _their_ ears
who indulged in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But the