With them go Jane and Peripatetica, joining a group, who, having paid their respects to heaven, are now ambitious to inspect the state chambers in the palace of their earthly sovereign. These prove to be the usual dull, uninviting apartments—flaring with gilt, and with the satins of criard colours which modern royalty always 247affect. There are the usual waxed floors, the usual uncomfortable fauteuils ranged stiffly against walls hung with inferior pictures, that are so tediously characteristic of palaces, and it is with relief and delight that Jane and Peripatetica find sandwiched amid these vulgar rooms two small chambers that by some miracle have escaped the ravages of the upholsterer. Two chambers, left intact from Norman days, that are like jewel caskets. Walls panelled with long smooth slabs of marble, grown straw-coloured with age, the delicate graining of the stone being matched like the graining of fine wood; panels set about with rich mosaics of fantastic birds and imaginary beasts framed in graceful arabesques. These are the Stanza Ruggiero; the rooms occupied by King Roger, the furnishings, such scant bits as there are, being also of his time. “In Roger’s day,” commented Jane, “kings were not content with housings and plenishings of the ‘Early Pullman, or Late Hamburg-American School’; they knew how to be kingly in their surroundings.” “It’s a curious fact,” agreed Peripatetica, “that there isn’t a modern palace in Europe that a self-respecting American millionaire wouldn’t blush to live in. No one ever hears of great artists being called upon to design or beautify a modern royal residence. Bad taste in furnishing seems universal among latter-day kings, who appear to form their ideas of domestic decoration from second-rate German hotels. Fancy any one seeing the high purity and beauty of Roger’s chambers and then ordering such ruthless splashings of gilt and cotton satin! Why, even ‘the best families’ of Podunk or Kalamazoo would gibe at the contrast, and as for the Wheat and Pork Kings of Denver or Chicago—they 248would have the whole place made époque in a week, if they had to corner the lard market, or form a breakfast-food trust to be able to afford it!” “God made the day to be followed by the night. The moon and stars are at His command. Has He not created all things? Is He not Lord of all? Blessed be the Everlasting God!” Jane was reading aloud from her guide-book.