Page:"The Mummy" Volume 1.djvu/281

Rh were worthy of the apartment they occupied. Brocaded silks, cloth of gold, embroided velvets, gold and silver tissues, and gossamer nets made of the spider's web, were mingled with precious stones and superb plumes of feathers in a profusion quite beyond description. The most beautiful of the female habiliments, however, were robes made of woven asbestos, which glittered in the brilliant light like molten silver. The ladies were all arrayed in loose trowsers, over which hung drapery in graceful folds; and most of them carried on their heads, streams of lighted gas forced by capillary tubes into plumes, fleurs-de-lis, or in short any form the wearer pleased; which jets de feu had an uncommonly chaste and elegant effect. The gentlemen were all clothed in the Spanish style, with slashed sleeves, short cloaks, and large hats, ornamented with immense plumes of ostrich feathers, it being considered in those days extremely vulgar to appear with the head uncovered. It would, perhaps, have been difficult to imagine more perfect models of male and female beauty than those which now adorned the Court of Queen Claudia, for the beau ideal of the painter's fancy seemed realized, nay