forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except the front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side of the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch thinner in their central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else 21 taken at the burning of Paris from a place called ‘The Louvre,’ and 2 or else 3 from a place in England:  so that the panels have the look of frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst, topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs.  The galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, two in the east facade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from the roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar.  On the east roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar telescope; and from that height, and from the galleries, I can watch under the bright moonlight of this climate, which is very like lime-light, the for-ever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on the Aegean Sea:  for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, to return dazed, and weak, and drunken.  Or again—­twice within these last void and idle six months—­I have suddenly run, bawling out, from this temple of luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by the shore, smitten for one intense moment with realisation of the past of this earth, and moaning:  ’alone, alone ... all alone, alone, alone ... alone, alone....’  For events precisely resembling eruptions take place in my brain; and one spangled midnight—­ah, how spangled!—­I may kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal:  the next, I may strut like a cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven.

* * * * *

But it was not to write of this—­of all this—!

Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing....  But why I hesitate to admit to myself what I know, is not clear.  If They speak to me, I may surely write of Them:  for I do not fear Them, but am Their peer.

Of the island I have written nothing:  its size, climate, form, vegetation....  There are two winds:  a north and a south wind; the north is cool, and the south is warm; and the south blows during the winter months, so that sometimes on Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the north, which is cool, blows from May to September, so that the summer is hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was made for a king.  The mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit.