The Raven
Page: 7

after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye
for colours and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere
fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed
with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him
mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear
and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it
was his own guiding taste which had given character to the
masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare
and glitter and piquancy and phantasm--much of what has been since
seen in "Hernani". There were arabesque figures with
unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such
as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of
the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and
not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro
in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of
dreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about taking hue
from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem
as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony
clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a
moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the
clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes
of the chime die away--they have endured but an instant--and a
light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And
now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and
fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows
through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber
which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the