ecause
it was there that Louis Quatorze himself had been received upon a
temporary throne, set up, with splendid decorations and triumphal
arches, in the open air, when he returned from his Flanders campaign.
Riza Bey was upon this occasion a little more splendid than he had been
on his way from the sea-coast, and really loomed up in startling style
in his tall, black, rimless hat of wool, shaped precisely like an
elongated flower-pot, and his silk robes dangling to his heels and
covered with huge painted figures and bright metal decorations of every
shape and size unknown, to European man-millinery. A circlet or collar,
apparently of gold, set with precious stones (California diamonds!)
surrounded his neck, and monstrous glittering rings covered all the
fingers, and even the thumbs of both his hands. His train, consisting of
sword, cup, and pipe bearers, doctors, chief cooks, and bottle-washers,
cork extractors and chiropodists (literally so, for it seems that
sharing the common lot of humanity, great men have corns even in
Persia,) were similarly arrayed as to fashion, but less stupendously in
jewelry.

Well, after the throng had scampered, crowded, and shouted themselves
hoarse, and had straggled to their homes, sufficiently tired and
pocket-picked, the Ambassador and his suite were lodged in sumptuous
apartments in the old royal residence of the Tuileries, under the care
and charge of King Louis' own assistant Major-Domo and a guard of
courtiers and regiments of Royal Swiss. Banqueting and music filled up
the first evening; and upon the ensuing day His Majesty, who thus did
his visitors especial honor, sent the Duc de Richelieu, the most
polished courtier and diplomatist in France, to announce that he would
graciously receive them on the third evening at Versailles.

Meanwhile the most extensive preparations were made for the grand
audience thus accorded; and when the appointed occasion had arrived, the
entire Gallery of Mirrors with all the adjacent spaces and corridors,
were crowded with the beauty, the chivalry, the wit, taste, and
intellect of France at that dazzling period. The gallery, which is three
hundred and eighty feet in length by fifty in height, derives its name
from the priceless mirrors which adorn its walls, reaching from floor to
ceiling, opposite the long row of equally tall and richly mullioned
windows that look into the great court and gardens. These windows, hung
with the costliest silk curta