Its area was about thirty feet in diameter, and in height nearly the same, with a domed roof, richly fretted with what had once been golden scroll-work upon an azure ground. The walls were painted, as even _I_ could discover, by the hand of a master, with copies from Guido and Caracci, in compartments bordered with massive gilded scroll-work, the ground between the panels having been originally, like the ceiling, of bright azure. The window-frames had been gilded; and the inside of the door painted, like the walls, in azure, with pictures of high merit in the panels. Every side of the octagon but two, the opposite walls to the right and left, were occupied by windows or a door; but that to the right was filled by a mantel-piece, exquisitely wrought with Caryatides in white Carrara marble, with a copy of the Aurora above it, while the space opposite to it had been occupied by a superb mirror, reaching from the cornice of the ceiling. Nearly in the centre of this mirror, however, there was a small circular fracture, as if made by a stone or a bullet, with long cracks radiating, like the beams of a star, in all directions over the shivered plate; and when I looked at it more closely, I observed that it was dashed in many places with large drops of some dark purple fluid, which had hardened with time into compact and solid gouts. I thought little of this at the time, and only wondered why people could be so mad as to abandon so beautiful a place; and why, since they had abandoned it, they did not remove the furniture, of which even a boy's eye could detect the value. There was a centre-table of circular form, the pedestal of which, curiously carved, had been wrought, like all the rest, in gold and azure, while the slat, when I had wiped away with some fresh green leaves the thick layer of dust which covered it, positively astonished my eyes, by the delicacy and beauty of the designs with which it was adorned. Beside this, there were divans and arm-chairs of the same fashion and colors, with cushions which had been once of sky-blue damask, though their brilliancy, and even their hues, had long ago been defaced by the dust, the dampness, and the squalor of that neglected place. I should have mentioned, that on the beautiful table I discovered gouts of the same dark substance which I had previously observed on the broken mirror: and that there were still clearly perceptible on one of the divans, dark splashes, and what must, when fluid, have been almost a pool of the same deep, rusty hue. At the time, it is true, I paid little attention to these things, being busily employed in the boy-like idea of putting my newly discovered palace of Armida into a complete state of repair, and coming to pass all my leisure moments, even to the studying my Prometheus Bound, and composing my weekly hexameters and Alcaics in this sweet sequestered spot.