But the gorgeous green and gold and purple-eyed plumes looked pretty, so she had let them stay.
'We shall have so many jarring notes of "modernity" in our discussions,' she had said, 'that one note the more in decoration does not matter;' and, backed by them, she sat now upon her ivory throne, an exquisite figure, poetic and delicate, with her cream-white skirts of the same hue as her throne, and her strings of great pearls at her throat. Next her was seated an ecclesiastic of high eminence, who had in vain protested that he was wholly out of place in such a diversion. 'Was Cardinal Bembo out of place at Ferrara and Urbino?' she had objected; and had so successfully, in the end, vanquished his scruples, that the late sunbeams, slanting through the oak-leaves and on to that gay assemblage, had found out in it his handsome head and his crimson sash, and his blue eyes full of their and keen witty observation, and his white hands folded together on his knee.
In a semicircle whose wings stretched right and left were ranged the gentlemen and ladies who formed momentarily the house party of the château; great people all; all the women young and all the men brilliant, no dull person amongst them, dulness being the one vice condemned there without any chance of pardon. They were charming people, distinguished people, handsome people also, and they made a gay and gracious picture, reclining or sitting in any attitudes they chose on these grassy slopes, which had seen the court of Francis and of both Marguerites:
Above their heads floated a silken banner, on which, in letters of gold, were embroidered the wise words, 'Qu'on m'aime, mais avec de l'esprit!'
'To return to our original demand—what is the definition of Love?' asked their queen and president, turning her lovely eyes on to the great ecclesiastic, who replied with becoming gravity:
'Madame, what can a humble priest possibly know of the theme?'
She smiled a little. 'You know as much as Bembo knew,' she made answer.
'Ah no, Madame! The times are changed.'
'The times, perhaps; not human nature. However, this is the question which must be first decided by the Court at large: How is the nature of Love to be defined?'
A gentleman on her left murmured: