s at the Grand Babylon are famous in the world of
hotels, and indeed elsewhere, as being, in their own way, unsurpassed.
Some of the palaces of Germany, and in particular those of the mad
Ludwig of Bavaria, may possess rooms and saloons which outshine them in
gorgeous luxury and the mere wild fairy-like extravagance of wealth; but
there is nothing, anywhere, even on Eighth Avenue, New York, which can
fairly be called more complete, more perfect, more enticing, or--not
least important--more comfortable.

The suite consists of six chambers--the ante-room, the saloon or
audience chamber, the dining-room, the yellow drawing-room (where
Royalty receives its friends), the library, and the State bedroom--to
the last of which we have already been introduced. The most important
and most impressive of these is, of course, the audience chamber, an
apartment fifty feet long by forty feet broad, with a superb outlook
over the Thames, the Shot Tower, and the higher signals of the
South-Western Railway. The decoration of this room is mainly in the
German taste, since four out of every six of its Royal occupants are of
Teutonic blood; but its chief glory is its French ceiling, a masterpiece
by Fragonard, taken bodily from a certain famous palace on the Loire.
The walls are of panelled oak, with an eight-foot dado of Arras cloth
imitated from unique Continental examples. The carpet, woven in one
piece, is an antique specimen of the finest Turkish work, and it was
obtained, a bargain, by Felix Babylon, from an impecunious Roumanian
Prince. The silver candelabra, now fitted with electric light, came from
the Rhine, and each had a separate history. The Royal chair--it is not
etiquette to call it a throne, though it amounts to a throne--was looted
by Napoleon from an Austrian city, and bought by Felix Babylon at the
sale of a French collector. At each corner of the room stands a gigantic
grotesque vase of German faience of the sixteenth century. These were
presented to Felix Babylon by William the First of Germany, upon the
conclusion of his first incognito visit to London in connection with the
French trouble of 1875.

There is only one picture in the audience chamber. It is a portrait of
the luckless but noble Dom Pedro, Emperor of the Brazils. Given to Felix
Babylon by Dom Pedro himself, it hangs there solitary and sublime as a
reminder to Kings and Princes that Empires may pass away and greatness
fall. A certain Prince who was occupyin