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Torches had been lighted throughout the house Doors lay open Windoere uncovered as they looked out over the firmament and the sea

And as I left the barren little stairs that led down fro I was truly in the safe refuge of an is that an inificent Grecian urns stood on pedestals in the corridors, great bronze statues from the Orient in their various niches, exquisite plants bloos from India, Persia, China covered the iant stuffed beasts mounted in lifelike attitudes -- the brown bear, the lion, the tiger, even the elephant standing in his own ions, birds of prey clutching dried branches made to look like the limbs of real trees

But the brilliantly coloreddominated all

In one cha of the sunburnt Arabian desert complete with an exquisitely detailed caravan of ca over the sand In another roo with delicately rendered tropical blossoms, vines, carefully drawn leaves

The perfection of the illusion startled me, enticed me, but the more I peered into the pictures the more I saw

There were creatures everywhere in the texture of the jungle-insects, birds, worave , finally, that I had slipped out of ti Yet it was all quite flat upon the wall

I was getting dizzy Everywhere I turned walls gave out on new vistas I couldn’t name some of the tints and hues I saw

As for the style of all this painting, it baffled htedthe classical proportions and skills that one sees in all the later Renaissance painters: da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, as well as the painters of ht was spectacular Living creatures seemed to breathe as I looked on

But the details The details couldn’t have been realistic or in proportion There were si on the leaves There were thousands of tiny insects in one painting of a suallery walled on either side by painted ures froyptians, then Greeks and Ros and queens There were Renaissance people in doublets and leggings, the Sun King with his e

But again, the detailsthe to a cape, the cut on the side of a face, the spider half -- crushed beneath a polished leather boot

I started to laugh It wasn’t funny It was just delightful I began to laugh and laugh

I had to force ave ht

Walls and walls of books and rolled lobes in their wooden cradles, busts of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, great sprawling es lay in stacks on tables And there were strewn everywhere curious objects Fossils, mummified hands, exotic shells There were bouquets of dried flowers, figurines and fragyptian hieroglyphs

And everywhere in the center of the roolass cases, were comfortable chairs with footstools, and candelabra or oil lamps

In fact, the i hours of pure enjoye, huht sit

I stayed a long ti the Latin and Greek titles I felt a little drunk, as if I’d happened on a mortal with a lot of wine in his blood

But I had to find Marius I went on out of this rooh another painted hallway to an even larger rooing of the birds and smelled the perfume of the flowers before I even reached this place And then I found es There were not only birds of all sizes and colors here, there were one wild in their little prisons as I made ainst the cages -- ferns and banana trees, cabbage roses, httime vines There were purple and white orchids, waxed flowers that trapped insects in theirwith peaches and leed from this little paradise, it was into a hall of sculptures equal to any gallery in the Vatican s, Oriental furnishings, ering on each object or new discovery To learn the contents of this house would have taken a lifetime And I pressed on

I didn’t knohere I was going But I knew that I was being allowed to see all these things

Finally I heard the unmistakable sound of Marius, that low rhythmic beat of the heart which I had heard in Cairo And I moved toward it