Great preparations were made for his arrival. I could not count the servants in the Prince's magnificent but tarnished liveries. They swarmed at the entrance, and lined every stairway and gallery; and there were preparations for a brilliant fête and illumination of the whole of the vast and ancient fabric. As we approached, a fine band, also in the livery of the House, played English airs like "Rule Britannia," then new to the Sicilies; and the Prince and Donna Rusidda, in splendid Court dress, met us at the very entrance of the grand salon, from which I noticed the famous silken hangings had been stripped, leaving the polished porphyry and the Cosmato work exposed, which at once struck the Admiral's attention. He had hardly got through the formal greetings before he commented on the splendour of the apartment. Will and I exchanged glances, and knowing by this time something of the country and of the straits of the Prince, were not surprised when we found the bedroom set apart for the Admiral in another part of the palace, which we had not yet visited, decorated with these same silken hangings, which had heretofore hung over the somewhat cold porphyry walls of the grand salon. We recognised further, in this chamber and the galleries approaching to it, nearly every beautiful object which we had seen scattered through the palace when we were chasing round it with Donna Rusidda. We were much struck, at the same time, with the fortress-like character of the place; for the lower windows were all strongly enough barred to resist a military assault, and entrance into the dwelling part there was none except by the two great Arabic doorways set close together on the inner side of the palace, one of which led only to the uninhabited lower rooms rented as a storehouse by the farmer, and the other opened directly into the small portion used by the Prince and his sister, to which the only access was by a narrow stairway walled-in to the ceiling. "Princess," the Admiral began, when the Prince and his sister had conducted him to his bed-chamber, for he was by this sick with longing for the beloved society of My Lady, "I fear that I must leave when the other guests bid their adieux this evening, as this is one of my last days in Palermo. There are so many things that might demand my attention."