Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/200

Rh a drawbridge and under a portcullis, when the warder appeared. He was a sober-suited youth, with a rueful countenance; love-lorn, the girls said, pointing to his hump-back and a braid of hair round his neck. He bowed without relaxing a muscle, and led us through a walled court where there were green grass and potted plants, and, perched over our heads in niches of the rock, eagles who, it would appear, but for the bars of iron before them, had selected these eyries of their own free-will. Our warder proceeded through a passage with a pretty mosaic pavement to the knight's hall, which is hung with weapons of the middle ages, disposed in regular figures. The ceiling is painted with knight's devices, and complete suits of armour, helmets, and richly-embossed shields hang against the wall.

We were repeatedly assured that the furniture was, in truth, of the middle ages, and had been collected by the prince at infinite pains; and looking at it in good faith as we proceeded, everything pleased us. There is a centre-table with an effigy in stone of Charlemagne, a most fantastical old clock, carved Gothic chairs, oak tables; in the dining-room an infinite variety of silver drinking-cups, utensils of silver, and of ivory richly carved, and very small diamond-shaped mirrors, all cracked ; by-the-way, an incidental proof of their antiquity. The princess' rooms, en suite, are very prettily got up; her sleeping-room has an oaken bedstead of the fourteenth century, with a high, carved foot-board like a rampart, and curtains of mixed silk and woollen. In the