The palace was brilliant with numberless lights; and the warm air was heavy with the odors of myrrh, violets, jasmine, and other flowers and spices. Fountains cast up a delicate spray which glittered like star-dust in their pulsating prismatic play. Mirrors of polished steel duplicated every beautiful object, dazzled the bewildered senses, and flung chaplets of rosy chains around the soul of every captive and victim. To breathe the magic air was to experience a delicious intoxication.
The vaulted ceilings of the principal apartments were frescoed with a sky in which were floating fleecy clouds of rosy hue, from the midst of which smiled faces of bewildering shape and beauty.
In the dances and religious processions that were painted upon panels trooped forms of the divinest beauty, bearing garlands and chaplets and lyres, keeping time to the soft minstrelsy of melody which seemed to issue from the very walls. Every ornament, picture, and statue silently chanted an invitation to ENJOY.
The door from below opened, and Chloe ushered the pure Jewish maiden into the presence of Marcius. But she came not alone. The small brother, though uninvited, appeared also, and they were hand in hand.
Saulus plied the oars with a steady stroke that would have done credit to more mature muscles, and the light shallop with its precious freight glided rapidly over the mirror-like surface of the Cydnus. The air was laden with fragrant exhalations from spicy shrubs, the bending branches of which hung over the water on either bank; the grounds immediately upon the river being generally laid out in gardens, which, like those of Benoni, extended to the water's edge. The lily and rose-tree, the oleander and mulberry, each made its contribution of sweet odors, while their misty shadows quivered upon the surface of the water as the two moved gently by. Out of the thick foliage, here and there, came the song of a nightingale, the soft whistle of a quail, or the cooing of a turtle-dove calling its mate, perchance disturbed by the plash of the oars.
The poetic inspiration and openness to nature's voices, so prominent during the former days of Jewish psalmody and prophecy, had greatly decayed under the influence of a harsh formalism. The children of Benoni, while not indifferent to the beauty about them, were rather dwelling amid vague visions of the future.