chest
texture, and the palace, as it burst upon my vision, fashioned out of
undreamed-of blocks of onyx, resembled more a massive opal filled
with flashing, living, fire, than the mere home of a splendid royalty.

I was glad when the procession stopped before the gorgeous entrance to
the palace. Another minute of such splendor would have blinded me. A
fanfare of trumpets sounded, and I descended, so dizzy with what I had
seen that, as my feet touched the ground, I staggered like a drunken
man, and then I heard my name sounded and passed from one flunky to
another up the magnificent staircase into the blue haze of the
hallway, and gradually sounding fainter and fainter until it was lost
in the distance of the mysterious corridor. I still staggered as I
mounted the steps, and the Major Domo approached me.

"I trust you are not ill," he whispered in my ear.

"No--not ill," I replied. "Only somewhat flabbergasted by all this
magnificence, and my eyes hurt like the very deuce."

"It is perhaps too much for mortal eyes," he said; and then, turning
to a gilded Ethiopian who stood close at hand, he observed, quietly,
"Rhadamus, run over to the Argus and ask him if he can spare this
gentleman a pair of blue goggles for an hour or two."

"Better get me a dozen pairs," I put in. "I don't think one pair will
be enough. It may strain my nose to hold them, but I'd rather
sacrifice my nose than my eyes any day."

But the boy was off, and ere I reached the presence of Jupiter I was
very kindly provided with the very essential article, and I must
confess that I found great relief in them. They were so densely blue
that an ordinary bit of splendor could not have been discerned through
their opaque depths, any more than Thisbe could have been seen by her
doting lover, Pyramus, through the wall that separated them, but
nothing known to man could have shut out the supreme gloriousness of
the interior of Jupiter's palace. Even with the goggles of the Argus
regulated to protect one thousand eyes upon my nose, it made my
dazzled optics blink.

I do not know what the proportions of the palace were. I regret to say
that I forgot to ask, but I am quite confident that I walked at least
eight miles along that corridor, and never was a mansion designed that
was better equipped in the matter of luxuries. I suspect I shall be
charged with exaggerating, but it is none the less true that within
that spacious building were appliances of every sor