again a cluster of lights
indicated a window-pane and a belated tenant, but the garden walls were
in ruins, the tiled roofs sagging, the ancient whitewash was peeling;
all blended and lifted into a harmony of color and pathos by the genius
of the artist. The expanse of dull green-blue walls of rough plaster
below the frieze was unbroken; on the marble floor there were blue
velvet rugs. The furniture was of ebony and dull-blue brocade. There was
not even a picture on an easel, but there were several Rodins and
Meuniers. At the lower or west end of the room the wall had been removed
and replaced by a single immense pane of plate glass. From this window,
always curtainless, there was a startling view of the steep drop of the
hill, beetling with houses and steeples, Telegraph Hill beyond and a
little to the north; then the bay, and the towns on its opposite rim. At
night the scene, with its blue above and black below, picked out with a
thousand lights--massed into a diadem beyond the bay--looked like a
sublimation of the painter's work. Within, the cunningly arranged lights
saved the room at all times from being too sombre, and were set to
reveal every detail of paintings far too precious to have been
recklessly lavished upon a wooden house in the most recklessly built of
all great cities.

The dining-room--which had the proportions of a banqueting-hall, with an
alcove for family use--was hung with tapestries and furnished with
chairs lifted bodily from a castle in Spain; and it was a room in which
no one would remember to look for ancestors. The library also commanded
a view of the bay and had been decorated by native artists with
imitations of the Giorgione frescoes, charmingly pink and smudgy. The
hangings and furniture were of royal crimson brocade, and the walls were
covered with books. Mr. Toole, who was a scholar of the old-fashioned
sort, of which California still holds so many, had selected the books;
and the contents were as noteworthy as the bindings. In a special alcove
was a large number of priceless Fourteenth and Sixteenth Century
editions. From this sumptuous room curved an iron balcony, where the old
gentleman might be seen sunning himself any fine day, his steel
spectacles half-way down his nose, and a volume propped on the shelf of
an easy-chair furnished with all the modern improvements.

On the white satin panels of the large round hall were a few of the most
valuable old masters as yet brought to the