At length I arrived, through a door that closed behind me, in another vast hall of the palace.

It was filled with a subdued crimson light; by which I saw that slender pillars of black, built close to walls of white marble, rose to a great height, and then, dividing into innumerable divergent arches, supported a roof, like the walls, of white marble, upon which the arches intersected intricately, forming a fretting of black upon the white, like the network of a skeleton-leaf.

The floor was black.
Between several pairs of the pillars upon every side, the place of the wall behind was occupied by a crimson curtain of thick silk, hanging in heavy and rich folds.

Behind each of these curtains burned a powerful light, and these were the sources of the glow that filled the hall.

A peculiar delicious odour pervaded the place.