ld sparkles,
jewels emit light, the purple draping imprisons
within its rich folds the radiance of the lustres.
The light is reflected from shining silk. Threads
of pearl are spread in rows upon brocades sewed
with thread of silver. Golden embroideries intertwine
in capricious arabesques, costumes, jewels,
appointments so extraordinarily rich that the stage
seems a mine of glory.

The fashionable world of our time has little taste for such pleasures.
This old splendour we cannot produce; but the words which the
magnificent lords and ladies spoke to one another as they blazed,
were those that make up the Poetry of Fletcher's _Faithful
Shepherdess_, Ben Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_, and, finest of
all, the _Comus_ of Milton. They are the most matchless frames of
language in which sweet thoughts and fancies were ever set. After
all, before this higher beauty, royal pomp even seems only a coarse
excrescence, and all would be better if the accessories of the
rendering were very simple. Already in my mind is the grove for
_Comus_ designed; the mass of green which shall stand in the
centre, the blasted trunk that shall rise for contrast to one side,
and the vine that shall half conceal the splintered summit, the banks
of wild-flowers that shall be transferred, the light the laboratory
shall yield us to make all seem as if seen through enchanter's
incense. I have in mind the sweet-voiced girl who shall be the lost
lady and sing the invocation to Sabrina; the swart youth who shall be
the magician and say the lines,

"At every fall, smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled";

and the golden-haired maid who shall glide in and out in silvery
attire, as the attendant spirit. Come, Fastidiosus,--I shall invite
too the editors of _David's Harp_,--and you shall all own the
truth of Milton's own words, "that sanctity and virtue and truth
herself may in this wise be elegantly dressed," when the attendant
spirit recites:

"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin low doth bend;
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue; she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."

CHAPTER IV

THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET

In January of 1870, having decided