return unchanged, in order that she may not find them old on her return,
if she should still be young. There are those who say that she has lived
all these years, and still lives, somewhere, in some strange form,
perhaps far from here, bewitched by the old man, and waiting for release
from her enchantment. I do not know."

"And what was her name?" said Aunt Amanda.

"She was named," said the Third Vice-President, "the Princess Miranda."

"And what are all those other towers in the city?" said Aunt Amanda.

"It was the fashion, after the King's Tower was built, to build towers.
The King, as you may suppose, sets the fashion in all things. But no
more pleasure-towers are built nowadays; the thing had its day, and died
out. There is a fashion now in pleasure-domes. They are modeled after
the pleasure-dome built by Kubla Khan in Xanadu."

"Well," said Toby, "I don't see what we've got to do with all this. The
party I want to see is Shiraz the Rug-Merchant."

CHAPTER XXI

SHIRAZ THE RUG-MERCHANT

The wayfarers came to a halt before the Wanderers' Gate. The wall of the
city stood before them, and stretched away to a great distance on either
hand. People were going in and out at the gate; some on foot, driving
donkeys before them, some on horseback, some in wagons, and all brisk
and talkative. The Third Vice-President received a respectful greeting
from several of those on horseback. He turned to his companions with a
wave of the hand, and said:

"The Wanderers' Bazaar!"

On each side of the open gate, at the foot of the high thick wall, was
what appeared to be a fair. As far as the eye could see, the base of the
wall was lined with booths, each with an awning over it from the wall
behind, gaily striped in orange and blue and yellow and brown. In these
booths was spread out in disorderly profusion a mass of merchandise of
all kinds; gold and silver ornaments, brass and copper vessels, rugs and
carpets, spectacles and clocks, toys and games, herbs and ointments,
fish-nets and sailors' instruments, canes and crutches, ribbons and
laces, perfumery, precious stones--things innumerable; even parrots and
monkeys, in cages; in one booth was a potter, twirling his potter's
wheel; in another a fortune-teller, laying little sticks down in curious
patterns on his table; in another a man pasting on cards bits of
coloured feathers, in the form of tiny birds and fowls, most life-like;
in another a glass-blower, delicatel