pavillion of purple silk..

On the wall facing the throne hung a life-sized portrait of Charles V in hunting dress, with a great mastiff by his side, and a picture of Philip II receiving homage of the Netherlands occupied the center of the wall.Between the walls stood a black ebony cabinet, inlaid with plates of ivory, on wich the figures from Holbein's "Dance of Death" had been graved-by the hand, some said, of that famous master himself.



He would not have given a rose for all the pearls on the canopy, or one white petal of his rose for the throne itself.
Here, in the palace, the air was close and heavy, but in the forest the wind blew free, and the sunlight with wandering hands of gold moved the tremulous leaves aside. There were flowers, too, in the forest, not so splendid, perhaps, as the flowers in the garden, but more sweetly scented for all that; hyacinths in early spring that flooded with waving purple the cool glens and grassy knolls; yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps around gnarled roots of the oak tree; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and irsis lilac and gold.