the various artists, musicians, orators, and poets whom Maecenas had
gathered in his cool business fashion under that roof, all seemed to
become, by contrast with surrounding Nature, as new and artificial as
the house, and as powerless to assert themselves against its influence.

He was still sleeping when James re-entered the room, but awoke promptly
at the sound of his voice. In a few moments he had rearranged his
scarcely disordered toilette, and stepped out refreshed and observant
into the hall. The guests were still absent from that part of the
building, and he walked leisurely past the carelessly opened doors
of the rooms they had left. Everywhere he met the same glaring
ornamentation and color, the same garishness of treatment, the same
inharmonious extravagance of furniture, and everywhere the same troubled
acceptance of it by the inmates, or the same sense of temporary and
restricted tenancy. Dresses were hung over cheval glasses; clothes piled
up on chairs to avoid the use of doubtful and over ornamented wardrobes,
and in some cases more practical guests had apparently encamped in a
corner of their apartment. A gentleman from Siskyou--sole proprietor of
a mill patent now being considered by Maecenas--had confined himself to
a rocking-chair and clothes-horse as being trustworthy and familiar; a
bolder spirit from Yreka--in treaty for capital to start an independent
journal devoted to Maecenas's interests--had got a good deal out of, and
indeed all he had INTO, a Louis XVI. armoire; while a young painter from
Sacramento had simply retired into his adjoining bath-room, leaving the
glories of his bedroom untarnished. Suddenly he paused.

He had turned into a smaller passage in order to make a shorter cut
through one of the deserted suites of apartments that should bring him
to that part of the building where he designed to make his projected
improvement, when his feet were arrested on the threshold of a