The friend to whom he had written to prepare a residence, was fortunate in securing one which he believed exactly suited to his fastidious and classic taste. A gentleman of fortune had just completed and furnished an elegant establishment, when unexpected circumstances compelled him to leave his country to be absent several years.
I do not think Ernest would have fitted up our bridal home in so showy and magnificent a style; but his love for the beautiful and graceful was gratified, and he was pleased with my enthusiastic admiration and delight.
I sometimes imagined myself in an enchanted palace, when wandering through the splendid suite of apartments adorned with such oriental luxury. The gentleman whose taste had presided over the building of the mansion, had travelled all over Europe, and passed several years in the East. He had brought home with him the richest and rarest models of Eastern architecture, and fashioned his own mansion after them. Ernest had not purchased it, for the owner was not willing to sell; he was anxious, however, to secure occupants who would appreciate its elegance, and guard it from injury.
Ah! little did I think when eating my bread and milk from the china bowl bordered by flowers, when a silver spoon seemed something grand and massy in the midst of general poverty, that I should ever be the mistress of such a magnificent mansion. I had thought Grandison Place luxuriously elegant; but what was it compared to this? How shall I begin to describe it? or shall I describe it at all? I always like myself to know how to localize a friend, to know their surroundings and realities, and all that fills up the picture of their life. A friend! Have I made friends of my readers? I trust there are some who have followed the history of Gabriella Lynn with sufficient interest, to wish to learn something of her experience of the married life.
Come, then, with me, and I will devote this chapter to a palace, which might indeed fulfil the prayers of the most princely love.
This beautiful apartment, adorned with paintings and statues of the most exquisite workmanship, is a reception room, from which you enter the parlor and find yourself winding through fluted pillars of ingrained marble, from the centre of which curtains of blue and silver, sweeping back and wreathing the columns, form an arch beneath which queens might be proud to walk. The walls are glittering with silver and blue, and all the decorations of the apartment exhibit the same beautiful union. The ceiling above is painted in fresco, where cherubs, lovely as the dream of love, spread their wings of silvery tinted azure and draw their fairy bows.
Passing through this glittering colonnade into a kind of airy room, you pause on the threshold, imagining yourself in a fairy grotto. We will suppose it moonlight; for it was by moonlight I first beheld this enchanting scene. We arrived at night, and Ernest conducted me himself through a home which appeared to me more like a dream of the imagination than a creation of man. I saw that he was surprised; that he was unprepared for such elaborate splendor. He had told his friend to spare no expense; but he was not aware that any one had introduced such Asiatic magnificence into our cities. I believe I will describe my own first impressions, instead of anticipating yours.
The mellowness of autumn still lingered in the atmosphere,—for the season of the harvest-moon is the most beautiful in the world. The glorious orb illumined the fairy grotto with a radiance as intense as the noonday sun's. It clothed the polished whiteness of the marble statues with a drapery of silver, sparkled on the fountain's tossing wreaths, converted the spray that rose from the bosom of the marble basin below into a delicate web of silver lace-work, and its beams, reflected from walls of looking-glass, multiplied, to apparent infinity, fountains, statues, trees, and flowers, till my dazzled eyes could scarcely distinguish the shadow from the substance. The air was perfumed with the delicious odor of tropic blossoms, and filled with the sweet murmurs of the gushing fountain.
"Oh! how beautiful! how enchanting!" I exclaimed, in an ecstasy of admiration. "This must be ideal. Reality never presented any thing so brilliant, so exquisite as this. Oh, Ernest, surely this is a place to dream of, not a home to live in?"
"It does, indeed," he answered, "transcend my expectations; but if it pleases your eye, Gabriella, it cannot go beyond my wishes."