on a paddock
behind the domain.

As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
the manner of a Roman _atrium_, and from the oblong pool of turgid
water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
through a mazeland of apartments--suite upon suite--along many a length
of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
_ricochets_ to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
vestige of furniture--nowhere a trace of human life.

After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.

The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
_lampas_ of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
light, and the fumes of the narcotic _cannabis sativa_--the base of the
_bhang_ of the Mohammedans--in which I knew it to be the habit of my
friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
Prince Zaleski to be a consummate _cognoscente_--a profound amateur--as
well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, neverth