Page:"The Mummy" Volume 3.djvu/96

 "Good Heavens!" cried Ferdinand, looking round with astonishment at the elegant apartment he was shown into, adorned with a painted velvet carpet, silk curtains, and chairs and tables inlaid with brass and ivory; whilst a sumptuous canopy hung over a bed of down on one side, and divers little Cupids supported lights, held back curtains, and performed numerous other useful offices in different corners. "Can this be a prison? Neither Paris nor Vienna possess palaces half so splendid!"

The surprise of Ferdinand was natural, as he was still almost a stranger in England, and did not know that our happy island had been long blest with a race of people who thought prisons should be made agreeable residences, and had gone on improving them till they had ended in making them temples of luxury. In spite of all the conveniences of his prison, however, Ferdinand was perfectly wretched. He could not imagine what reason Lord Edmund had had for fastening a quarrel upon him; for, as his passion for Elvira, though violent, had been quite as evanescent as that he had formerly