If Odo had been charmed by the graceful
decorations of the theatre, he was dazzled by the airy splendour of this
apartment. Dance-music was pouring from the arched recesses above the
doorways, and chandeliers of coloured Murano glass diffused a soft
brightness over the pilasters of the stuccoed walls, and the floor of
inlaid marbles on which couples were rapidly forming for the
contradance. His eye, however, was soon drawn from these to the ceiling
which overarched the dancers with what seemed like an Olympian revel
reflected in sunset clouds. Over the gilt balustrade surmounting the
cornice lolled the figures of fauns, bacchantes, nereids and tritons,
hovered over by a cloud of amorini blown like rose-leaves across a rosy
sky, while in the centre of the dome Apollo burst in his chariot through
the mists of dawn, escorted by a fantastic procession of the human
races. These alien subjects of the sun--a fur-clad Laplander, a turbaned
figure on a dromedary, a blackamoor and a plumed American Indian--were
in turn surrounded by a rout of Maenads and Silenuses, whose flushed
advance was checked by the breaking of cool green waves, through which
boys wreathed with coral and seaweed disported themselves among shoals
of flashing dolphins. It was as though the genius of Pleasure had poured
all the riches of his inexhaustible realm on the heads of the revellers
below.
The Procuratessa brought Odo to earth by remarking that it was a
master-piece of the divine Tiepolo he was admiring.
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