a mourning-bed made for her of black
velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask,
with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground,
and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a
room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon
cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet
high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was
made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from
the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and
profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken
from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had
stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.

And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates, and
stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
blue silks, and wrought with _fleurs de lys_, birds, and images; veils
of _lacis_ worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades, and stiff
Spanish velvets; Georgian work with its gilt coins, and Japanese
_Foukousas_ with their green-toned golds and their marvellously-plumaged
birds.

He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the
long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored
away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of
the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that
she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering
that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He possessed a
gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a
repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal
blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pine-apple device wrought
in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into panels representing
scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was
figured in coloured silks upon the hood. This wa