he talked with
great vivacity, thankful for the kindness of her Liparian friends, for
the enjoyment and for the cheering. Her profuse gestures enlivened
everybody, introduced an element of fun into the stately Liparian
etiquette. Elizabeth herself could not but laugh at them. The queen
played her royal part with the self-possession of a bad but good-natured
actress. She spoke to everybody, spread amiable little atoms of her
small, chubby, brown majesty over one and all. Next her sat the king,
looking dignified and wise as Solomon. The emperor praised him for a
sensible, broad-minded sovereign: the king had already paid many visits
to Europe. The Syrian aide-de-camps were dignified too, calm and
composed, a little stiff in their ways, adapting themselves to western
manners; the queen's ladies-in-waiting wore the trains of their Paris or
London dresses a little strangely, but still looked slender in them,
brown and attractive, with their curly little heads and long,
almond-shaped eyes: still they would have been prettier in draped
gold-gauze.

The Syrians stayed twelve days before going on to Italy. It was the last
evening but one: in the Imperial a suite of fourteen rooms had been
lighted up around the great ballroom for a ball. Three thousand
invitations had been sent out. In the fore-court and in the neighbouring
main-streets stood the grenadiers.

The ballroom was at the back of the palace; the tall, balconied windows
were open and looked across their balustrades upon the shadows of the
park of plane-trees. The band resounded from the groups of palms in the
gallery. The imperial quadrille had been formed in the centre of the
room: the emperor with the queen, the king and the empress, the Archduke
of Carinthia and Thera, Othomar with the archduchess. The other official
quadrilles formed their figures around them. Hundreds of guests looked
on.

From the coruscating rock-crystal of the chandeliers, the electric light
flowed in white patches out of the high dome, glided along the
inlaid-marble walls and porphyry pillars of the ballroom and poured in
millions of scintillations on the smooth facets of the jewels, on the
gold of the uniforms and court-dresses, on the shimmering white brocades
of the trains; for white was prescribed: all the ladies were in white;
and the snow of the velvets, the lily glow of the satins were
silver-shrill. One blinding whirl of refulgence passed through the
immense room with its changing g