Short time had Angelo to gaze on his comrades that were to be:--another
minute, and he and his protectress were in the presence of the Tribune's
bride.

The chamber was not large--but it was large enough to prove that the
beautiful daughter of Raselli had realised her visions of vanity and
splendour.

It was an apartment that mocked description--it seemed a cabinet for the
gems of the world. The daylight, shaded by high and deep-set casements
of stained glass, streamed in a purple and mellow hue over all that the
art of that day boasted most precious, or regal luxury held most dear.
The candelabras of the silver workmanship of Florence; the carpets and
stuffs of the East; the draperies of Venice and Genoa; paintings like
the illuminated missals, wrought in gold, and those lost colours of blue
and crimson; antique marbles, which spoke of the bright days of Athens;
tables of disinterred mosaics, their freshness preserved as by magic;
censers of gold that steamed with the odours of Araby, yet so subdued
as not to deaden the healthier scent of flowers, which blushed in every
corner from their marble and alabaster vases; a small and spirit-like
fountain, which seemed to gush from among wreaths of roses, diffusing
in its diamond and fairy spray, a scarce felt coolness to the air;--all
these, and such as these, which it were vain work to detail, congregated
in the richest luxuriance, harmonised with the most exquisite taste,
uniting the ancient arts with the modern, amazed and intoxicated the
sense of the beholder. It was not so much the cost, nor the luxury, that
made the character of the chamber; it was a certain gorgeous and almost
sublime phantasy,--so that it seemed rather the fabled retreat of
an enchantress, at whose word genii ransacked the earth, and fairies
arranged the produce, than the grosser splendour of an earthly queen.