Among all these grinning creatures strutted a peacock, in which certainly pride made a most ridiculous figure, as he craned his beautiful neck in the brilliant sunlight, and dragged his gorgeous tail—alas! by means of the ugliest feet and legs ever made.
Suddenly the gilded, grated door flew open, an old Moor came out, bowed low before the forester with his hands meekly crossed before him, invited him by a wave of the hand to follow him, and both entered the garden.
Intoxicating clouds of perfume floated toward him from every bush and hedge.
Wonderful, never-before-seen flowers nodded to him in greeting from their slender stalks, and bent before him their lovely heads.
Brilliant birds flew from branch to branch before him, and sang with almost human voice.
Then an ugly sea-cat threw itself down from some tree, with its winding tail twisted around some branch, ground the teeth with a horrid grin, and sprang back into the thick foliage.
From a side path a purple stork came forward with solemn gravity, twisted the long neck up and down to affected compliment, scraped with his thin legs behind him, and then walked resolutely before the forester and the conducting Moor, looking almost constantly back to see if they were following.
In one of the marble basins a stone vintager upset continually the cask, and the clear, foaming new wine that streamed from the bung-hole bubbled up in the face of the sipping boy; in another an idol, ending in a fish's tail, blew out of a shell the clear stream in the air, and the dust of drops shone in the light like diamonds and rubies. White temples with ivy-entwined pillars glittered behind the hedges.
The forester followed like one in a dream, resisting, yet drawn on by an irresistible, enchanting power, until they reached a colossal castle, built in a style perfectly unknown to him.
He climbed a marble flight of steps, and went on over costly carpets, so soft and smooth that he could not hear his own steps.