brought from a distant quarry; hundreds of slaves are employed to cut and polish it; and human talent taxes its invention to give it graceful proportion. The dome towers in the blue air, the noble columns rise above the funereal cypresses around; and for what?—to keep a handful of dust from being scattered by the winds, and to preserve a memory for which no one living cares."
A thousand splendid trifles lay glittering on a large table near:—flasks of crystal, redolent of eastern perfumes, some of which, spotted with gold, enclosed a whole summer of roses from Damietta—toys wrought in mother-of-pearl and amber, heaped up with the profusion of a mistress of some geni, who knows that the sylphs of the air and the gnomes of the mines toil to work her pleasure. Placed on a richly chased gold stand was a déjeûner of Sevre china, the cups painted with medallions of the beauties of Louis the Fourteenth's reign. Charles took up the one that bore the likeness of the lovely and ill-fated La Valliere.
"And is it possible," he asked, "that a face like this, so sweet and so touching, could ever become a familiar, even a tiresome thing—that a cup so precious as this could ever be put to the common uses of the table? There is a strange similarity in the fate of the china and of the face wrought in its colours. Both guarded for a time as favourite toys, grown weary of, neglected, and left to the many chances of destruction—till heart and cup are alike broken!"
