A couple of footmen received us in a hall lighted by torches and decorated with stands of antique armor.

From the centre of this hall sprang a Gothic staircase, so light, so richly sculptured, so full of niches and statues, slender columns, foliated capitals, and delicate ornamentation of every kind, that it looked a very blossoming of the stone.

Following Dalrymple up this superb staircase and through a vestibule of carved oak, I next found myself in a room that might have been the scene of Plato's symposium.

Here were walls painted in classic fresco; windows curtained with draperies of chocolate and amber; chairs and couches of ebony, carved in antique fashion; Etruscan amphorae; vases and paterae of terracotta; exquisite lamps, statuettes and candelabra in rare green bronze; and curious parti-colored busts of philosophers and heroes, in all kinds of variegated marbles.

Powdered footmen serving modern coffee seemed here like anachronisms in livery.