more massive and, if we may use the term, Egyptian gorgeousness. The
walls were covered with the stuffs of the East, stiff with gold,
embroidered upon ground of the deepest purple; strange characters,
apparently in some foreign tongue, were wrought in the tesselated
cornices and on the heavy ceiling, which was supported by square pillars,
round which were twisted serpents of gold and enamel, with eyes to which
enormous emeralds gave a green and lifelike glare: various scrolls and
musical instruments lay scattered upon marble tables: and a solitary lamp
of burnished silver cast a dim and subdued light around the chamber. The
effect of the whole, though splendid, was gloomy, strange, and
oppressive, and rather suited to the thick and cave-like architecture
which of old protected the inhabitants of Thebes and Memphis from the
rays of the African sun, than to the transparent heaven and light
pavilions of the graceful orientals of Granada.

Leila stood within this chamber, pale and breathless, with her lips
apart, her hands clasped, her very soul in her ears; nor was it possible
to conceive a more perfect ideal of some delicate and brilliant Peri,
captured in the palace of a hostile and gloomy Genius. Her form was of
the lightest shape consistent with the roundness of womanly beauty; and
there was something in it of that elastic and fawnlike grace which a
sculptor seeks to embody in his dreams of a being more aerial than those
of earth. Her luxuriant hair was dark indeed, but a purple and glossy
hue redeemed it from that heaviness of shade too common in the tresses of
the Asiatics; and her complexion, naturally pale but clear and lustrous,
would have been deemed fair even in the north. Her features, slightly
aquiline, were formed in the rarest mould of symmetry, and her full rich
lips disclosed teeth that might have shamed the pearl. But the chief
charm of that exquisite countenance was in an expression of softness and
purity, and intellectual sentiment, that seldom accompanies that cast of