d behind
shrubbery, disappearing entirely from view, save as hunger necessitated
a brief emerging.

This tailless absentee was not what I had bought as the champion prize
winner. And Belle, after laying four eggs, refused to set. But I put
them under a turkey, and, to console myself and re-enforce my position
as an owner of peacocks, I began to study peacock lore and literature. I
read once more of the throne of the greatest of all the moguls at Delhi,
India.

"The under part of the canopy is embroidered with pearls and diamonds,
with a fringe of pearls round about. On the top of the canopy, which is
made like an arch with four panes, stands a peacock with his tail
spread, consisting all of sapphires and other proper-colored stones;
the body is of beaten gold enchased with several jewels, and a great
ruby upon his breast, at which hangs a pearl that weighs fifty carats.
On each side of the peacock stand two nosegays as high as the bird,
consisting of several sorts of flowers, all of beaten gold enameled.
When the king seats himself upon the throne, there is a transparent
jewel with a diamond appendant, of eighty or ninety carats, encompassed
with rubies and emeralds, so hung that it is always in his eye. The
twelve pillars also that support the canopy are set with rows of fair
pearls, round, and of an excellent water, that weigh from six to ten
carats apiece. At the distance of four feet upon each side of the throne
are placed two parasols or umbrellas, the handles whereof are about
eight feet high, covered with diamonds; the parasols themselves are of
crimson velvet, embroidered and stringed with pearls." This is the
famous throne which Tamerlane began and Shah Jahan finished, which is
really reported to have cost a hundred and sixty million five hundred
thousand livres (thirty-two million one hundred thousand dollars).

I also gloated over the description of that famous London dining-room,
known to the art world as the "Peacock Room," designed by Whistler.
Panels to the right and left represent peacocks with their tails spread
fan-wise, advancing in perspective toward the spectator, one behind the
other, the peacocks in gold and the ground in blue.

I could not go so extensively into interior decoration, and my mania for
making the outside of the house and the grounds highly decorative had
received a severe lesson in the verdict, overheard by me, as I stood in
the garden, made by a gawky country couple who were ou