three hundred and four pearls, one for every god that he worshipped.

When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of
France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,
and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
twenty-one diamonds. Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII,
on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a jacket
of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other rich
stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." The
favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold filigrane.
Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with
jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a
skull-cap parseme with pearls. Henry II wore jewelled gloves reaching to
the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two
great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of
Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped pearls and studded with
sapphires.

How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.

Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries that
performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern
nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject-- and he always had an
extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in
whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils
bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of
their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained
his flowerlike bloom. How different it was with material things! Where
had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which
the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls
for the pleasure of Athena? Where the huge velarium that Nero had
stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on
which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn
by white, gilt-reined steeds? He longed to see the curious table-napkins
wrought for the Priest of the Sun, on which were displayed all the
dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth
of King Chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic
robes that excited the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus and were
figured with "lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks,
hunters--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature"; and the
coat that Charles of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were
embroidered the verses of a song beginning "Madame, je suis tout
joyeux," the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold
thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four
pearls. He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims
for the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with "thirteen
hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the
king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings
were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked
in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black
velvet powdered with crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask,
with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground,
and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a
room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon
cloth of silver. Louis XIV had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet
high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was
made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from
the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and
profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken
from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had
stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its canopy.

And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite
specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, getting
the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with gold-thread palmates and
stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings; the Dacca gauzes, that
from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," and
"running water," and "evening dew"; strange figured cloths from Java;
elaborate yellow Chinese hangings; books bound in tawny satins or fair
blue silks and wrought with fleurs-de-lis, birds and images; veils of
lacis worked in Hungary point; Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish
velvets; Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese Foukousas,
with their green-toned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds.

He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed
he had for everything connected with the service of the Church. In the
long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house, he had
stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the
raiment of the Bride of Christ, who must wear purple and jewels and fine
linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the
suffering that she seeks for and wounded by self-inflicted pain. He
possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask,
figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in
six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the
pine-apple device wrought in seed-pearls. The orphreys were divided into
panels representing scenes from the life of the Virgin, and the
coronation of the Virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood.
This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of
green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves,
from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were
picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a
seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a
diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many
saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles,
also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow


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