lf for its long restraint, it
prepared to realize those visions of enchanted bowers and ancient
pageantry on which it had fed so long in the fictions and romances of
the Middle Ages. I have thought it worth while to notice so much of the
details as will enable the reader to form some slight conception for
himself of this scene of enchantment which the genius of the age had
contrived for its own amusement.

The palace was an exact square of three hundred twenty-eight feet. It
was pierced on every side with oriel windows and clear-stories curiously
glazed, the mullions and posts of which were overlaid with gold. An
embattled gate, ornamented on both sides with statues representing men
in various attitudes of war, and flanked by an embattled tower, guarded
the entrance. From this gate to the entrance of the palace arose in long
ascent a sloping dais or half pace, along which were grouped "images of
sore and terrible countenances," in armor of argentine or bright metal.
At the entrance, under an embowed landing-place, facing the great doors,
stood "antique" (classical) figures girt with olive branches. The
passages, the roofs of the galleries from place to place and from
chamber to chamber, were ceiled and covered with white silk, fluted and
embowed with silken hanging of divers colors and braided cloths, "which
showed like bullions of fine burnished gold." The roofs of the chambers
were studded with roses, set in lozenges, and diapered on a ground of
fine gold. Panels enriched with antique carving and gilt bosses covered
the spaces between the windows; while along all the corridors and from
every window hung tapestry of silk and gold, embroidered with figures.
Chairs covered with cushions of turkey-work, cloths of estate, of
various shapes and sizes, overlaid with golden tissue and rich
embroidery, ornamented the state apartments. The square on every side
was decorated with equal richness, and blazed with the same profusion of
glass, gold, and ornamental hangings; and "every quarter of it, even the
least, was a habitation fit for a prince," says Fleuranges, who had
examined it with the critical eye of a rival and a Frenchman.

To the palace was attached a spacious chapel, still more sumptuously
adorned. Its altars were hung with cloth of gold tissue embroidered with
pearls; cloth of gold covered the walls and desks. Basins, censers,
cruets, and other vessels, of the same precious materials, lent their
lustre to its servic