e glass door
and showing him into a spacious apartment, furnished with great luxury
and elegance, retired and left him alone, without a word. The vaulted
ceiling--which was the interior of the dome seen from without--was
painted to represent a light blue sky, in which small rosy clouds were
floating, and bewitching little Loves flying about in all sorts of
graceful attitudes, while the walls were hung with beautiful tapestry.
The cabinets, inlaid with exquisite Florentine mosaics and filled with
many rare and curious objects of virtu, the round table covered with
a superb Turkish cloth, the large, luxurious easy-chairs, the vases of
priceless porcelain filled with fragrant flowers, all testified to
the wealth and fastidious taste of their owner. The richly gilded
candelabra, of many branches, holding clusters of wax candles, which
shed their soft, mellow light on all this magnificence, were upheld
by sculptured arms and hands in black marble, to represent a negro's,
issuing from fantastic white marble sleeves; as if the sable attendants
were standing without the room, and had passed their arms through
apertures in the wall.

Leander, dazzled by so much splendour, did not at first perceive that
there was no one awaiting him in this beautiful apartment, but when he
had recovered from his first feeling of astonishment, and realized that
he was alone, he proceeded to take off his cloak and lay it, with his
hat and sword, on a chair in one corner, after which he deliberately
rearranged his luxuriant ringlets in front of a Venetian mirror, and
then, assuming his most graceful and telling pose, began pouring forth
in dulcet tones the following monologue: "But where, oh! where, is the
divinity of this Paradise? Here is the temple indeed, but I see not the
goddess. When, oh! when, will she deign to emerge from the cloud that
veils her perfect form, and reveal herself to the adoring eyes, that
wait so impatiently to behold her?" rolling the said organs of vision
about in the most effective manner by way of illustration.

Just at that moment, as if in response to this eloquent appeal, the
crimson silk hanging, which fell in front of a door that Leander had not
noticed, was pushed aside, and the lady he had come to seek stood before
him; with the little black velvet mask still over her face, to the great
disappointment and discomfiture of her expectant suitor. "Can it be
possible that she is ugly?" he thought to himself; "this obs