t of Charles the Rash, the last
Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls, and
studded with sapphires.

How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.

Then he turned his attention to embroideries, and to the tapestries that
performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the Northern
nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject--and he always had an
extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in
whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
ruin that Time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils
bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of
their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained
his flower-like bloom. How different it was with material things! Where
had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which
the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls
for the pleasure of Athena? Where, the huge velarium that Nero had
stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on
which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn
by white gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins
wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the
dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth
of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic
robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus, and were
figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks,
hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature;" and the
coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were
embroidered the verses of a song beginning "_Madame, je suis tout
joyeux_," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy, and was decorated with "thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
in gold." Catherine de Medicis had