population, all cheering and many of them waving torches. They
passed through many streets, and squares with marvellous fountains,
until they arrived at the chief and royal street, which has no equal in
the world. It is more than a mile long, never swerving from a straight
line, broad, yet the houses so elevated that they generally furnish the
shade this ardent clime requires. The architecture of this street is
so varied that it never becomes monotonous, some beautiful church, or
palace, or ministerial hotel perpetually varying the effect. All the
windows were full on this occasion, and even the roofs were crowded.
Every house was covered with tapestry, and the line of every building
was marked out by artificial light. The moon rose, but she was not
wanted; it was as light as day.

They were considerate enough not to move too rapidly through this heart
of the metropolis, and even halted at some stations, where bands of
music and choirs of singers welcomed and celebrated them. They moved
on more quickly afterwards, made their way through a pretty suburb,
and then entered a park. At the termination of a long avenue was the
illumined and beautiful palace of the Prince of Montserrat, where Myra
was to reside and repose until the momentous morrow, when King Florestan
was publicly to place on the brow of his affianced bride the crown which
to his joy she had consented to share.

CHAPTER XCV

There are very few temperaments that can resist an universal
and unceasing festival in a vast and beautiful metropolis. It is
inebriating, and the most wonderful of all its accidents is how the
population can ever calm and recur to the monotony of ordinary life.
When all this happens, too, in a capital blessed with purple skies,
where the moonlight is equal to our sunshine, and where half the
population sleep in the open air and wish for no roof but the heavens,
existence is a dream of phantasy and perpetual loveliness, and one is
at last forced to believe that there is some miraculous and supernatural
agency that provides the ever-enduring excitement and ceaseless
incidents of grace and beauty.

After the great ceremony of the morrow in the cathedral, and when Myra,
kneeling at the altar with her husband, received, under a canopy of
silver brocade, the blessings of a cardinal and her people, day followed
day with court balls and municipal banquets, state visits to operas, and
reviews of sumptuous troops. At length the end of all