We shall not describe them,
for the description of costume is the most inventive province of our
historical novelists, and we never like to be unfair, or trench upon
our neighbour's lands or rights; but the Alhambra button indicated a
mystical confederacy, and made the women quite frantic with curiosity.
The guests wandered through the gardens, always various, and now a
paradise of novelty. There were four brothers, fresh from the wildest
recesses of the Carpathian Mount, who threw out such woodnotes wild that
all the artists stared; and it was universally agreed that, had they not
been French chorus-singers, they would have been quite a miracle. But
the Lapland sisters were the true prodigy, who danced the Mazurka in
the national style. There was also a fire-eater; but some said he would
never set the river in flames, though he had an antidote against all
poisons! But then our Mithridates always tried its virtues on a stuffed
poodle, whose bark evinced its vitality. There also was a giant in the
wildest part of the shrubbery, and a dwarf, on whom the ladies showered
their sugarplums, and who, in return, offered them tobacco.
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