Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/275

264 calm from the cradle to the grave. Endless hours of those dead years rose before her to haunt her in this black solitude, in these chill iron-bound walls, in which the magnificence of her life had ended—hours in the lustrous glare of Eastern suns, under the curled leaves of palm, and the marble domes of ruined temples; in the laughing riot of Florentine nights, when the carnival-folly reeled flower-crowned adown the banks of Arno; in the gaslit radiance of Paris, when the fêtes of the Regency revived for her; in summer evenings in Sicilian air, when the low chants echoed softly over Mediterranean waters, and the felucca, flower-laden, glided through the star-light to music and to laughter; in palaces of Rome, of Vienna, of Prague, of Venice, where the dawn found the banqueters still at their revels, and no wines that flushed purple and gold in the blaze of the lights and the odours of perfume intoxicated the drinkers like the glance of her eyes, like the spell of her smile—all these scenes rose up above her, and filled with the hues of their life and their splendour the barren, bitter, stone-locked loneliness in which she was immured. She had loved her reign; she had loved her sceptre; she had loved those years so crowded with triumphs, with pleasures, with mirth, with wit, with radiance, with