the
supper-table was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the
agreeable petit-maitre, who entertained. He was already most carefully
dressed, but, like Martial's Stella, perhaps consciously, meant to
change his attire once and again during the banquet; in the last
instance, for an ancient vesture (object of much rivalry among the
young men of fashion, at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) a
toga, of altogether lost hue and texture. He wore it with a grace
which became the leader of a thrilling movement then on foot for the
restoration of that disused garment, in which, laying aside the
customary evening dress, all the visitors were requested to appear,
setting off the delicate sinuosities and well-disposed "golden ways" of
its folds, with harmoniously tinted flowers. The opulent sunset,
blending pleasantly with artificial light, fell across the quiet
ancestral effigies of old consular dignitaries, along the wide floor
strewn with sawdust of sandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of cool
coronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard of
old citron. The crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues of
the early autumn fruit--mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that had
long been hanging under careful protection upon the vines, were almost
as much a feast for the eye, as the dusky fires of the rare
twelve-petalled roses. A favourite animal, white as snow, brought by
one of the visitors, purred its way [79] gracefully among the
wine-cups, coaxed onward from place to place by those at table, as they
reclined easily on their cushions of German eider-down, spread over the
long-legged, carved couches.

A highly refined modification of the acroama--a musical performance
during supper for the diversion of the guests--was presently heard
hovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that the
company could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it had
been designed by their entertainer. They inclined on the whole to
think it some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wild
neighbourhood, turning, as it did now and then, to a solitary
reed-note, like a bird's, while it wandered into the distance. It
wandered quite away at last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight came
on, and made way for another sort of entertainment. An odd, rapid,
phantasmal glitter, advancing from the garden by torchlight, defined
itself, as it came nearer, into a dance of young m