Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/99

 all the turbaned attendants in their white muslin dresses, the native guards galloping before us, and this enormous building looking more like a real palace, a palace in the ‘Arabian Nights’, than anything I have been able to dream on the subject. It is something like what I expected, and yet not the least, at present, as far as externals go: it seems to me that we are acting a long opera.

I am now in my boudoir; very much the size of the Picture Gallery at Grosvenor House; three large glass doors on one side look over the city, three more at the end at the great gate and entrance: they are all venetianed up at present. Three sets of folding doors open into the bedroom and two bath-rooms at the other end; and three more on the other side into the dressing-room and passage that lead to this suite of rooms, for everyone here has their suite. Emily and I are in opposite wings, far as the poles asunder, and at night when I set about making my way from her room to mine, I am in imminent peril of stepping upon the bales of living white muslin that are sleeping about the galleries.

Our whole Indian system strikes me now, as