nstruments in the balconies. They were
strange instruments with huge bulbs of wood, and they played softly on
them and very beautifully, and their queer voices softly sang to the
music weird dirges of the griefs of their native land wherever that
may be. And far off in the heart of the city others were singing too,
the sound of it came to me wherever I roamed, not loud enough to
disturb my thoughts, but gently turning the mind to pleasant things.
Slender carved arches of marble, as delicate almost as lace, crossed
and re-crossed the ways wherever I went. There was none of that hurry
of which foolish cities boast, nothing ugly or sordid so far as I
could see. I saw that it was a city of beauty and song. I wondered how
they had travelled with all that marble, how they had laid it down on
Mallington Moor, whence they had come and what their resources were,
and determined to investigate closely next morning, for the old
shepherd had not troubled his head to think how the city came, he had
only noted that the city was there (and of course no one believed him,
though that is partly his fault for his dissolute ways). But at night
one can see little and I had walked all day, so I determined to find a
place to rest in. And just as I was wondering whether to ask for
shelter of those silk-robed men by signs or whether to sleep outside
the walls and enter again in the morning, I came to a great archway in
one of the marble houses with two black curtains, embroidered below
with gold, hanging across it. Over the archway were carved apparently
in many tongues the words: "Here strangers rest." In Greek, Latin and
Spanish the sentence was repeated and there was writing also in the
language that you see on the walls of the great temples of Egypt, and
Arabic and what I took to be early Assyrian and one or two languages I
had never seen. I entered through the curtains and found a tesselated
marble court with golden braziers burning sleepy incense swinging by
chains from the roof, all round the walls were comfortable mattresses
lying upon the floor covered with cloths and silks. It must have been
ten o'clock and I was tired. Outside the music still softly filled the
streets, a man had set a lantern down on the marble way, five or six
sat down round him, and he was sonorously telling them a story. Inside
there were some already asleep on the beds, in the middle of the wide
court under the braziers a woman dressed in blue was singing very
gent