and processes peculiar to them.

The bedroom contained a big bed, a chest of drawers waist-high, and some
easy chairs. On the mantel were an antique clock and copper
candlesticks. On the wall there was a fine photograph of a Botticelli in
the Berlin museum, representing a plump and penitent Virgin who was like
a housewife in tears. She was surrounded by gentleman-, lady-, and
little-boy-angels. The languishing young men held spliced wax tapers
that were like bits of rope; the coquettish hoydens had flowers stuck in
their long hair; and the mischievous cherub-pages looked rapturously at
the infant Jesus, who stood beside the Virgin and held out his hands in
benediction.

Then there was a print of Breughel, engraved by Cock, "The wise and the
foolish virgins": a little panel, cut in the middle by a corkscrew cloud
which was flanked at each side by angels with their sleeves rolled up
and their cheeks puffed out, sounding the trumpet, while in the middle
of the cloud another angel, bizarre and sacerdotal, with his navel
indicated beneath his languorously flowing robe, unrolled a banderole on
which was written the verse of the Gospel, "_Ecce sponsus venit, exite
obviam ei_."

Beneath the cloud, at one side, sat the wise virgins, good Flemings,
with their lighted lamps, and sang canticles as they turned the spinning
wheel. At the other side were the foolish virgins with their empty
lamps. Four joyous gossips were holding hands and dancing in a ring on
the greensward, while the fifth played the bagpipe and beat time with
her foot. Above the cloud the five wise virgins, slender and ethereal
now, naked and charming, brandished flaming tapers and mounted toward a
Gothic church where Christ stood to welcome them; while on the other