tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the
Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an
apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door
with an actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.

I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his
possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of
ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring
myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have
supplied the princely magnificence which burned and blazed around.

Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still
brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as well as from
an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had
not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the
architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design
had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the
_decora_ of what is technically called _keeping_, or to the proprieties
of nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon
none--neither the _grotesques_ of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures
of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich
draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibration of low,
melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered. The senses were
oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange
convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering
tongues of emerald and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun
poured in upon the whole, through windows, formed each of a single pane
of crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections,
from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten
silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the
artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of
rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.

"Ha! ha! ha!--ha! ha! ha! "--laughed the proprietor, motioning me to
a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at full-length
upon an ottoman. "I see," said he, perceiving that I could not
immediately reconcile myself to the _bienseance_ of so singular a
welcome--"I see you are astonished at my apartment--at my statues--my
pictures--my originality of conception in architecture and upholster