Every land of earth seemed to have contributed some stray fragment of
its learning, some example of its art. Nothing seemed lacking to this
philosophical kitchen-midden, from a redskin's calumet, a green and
golden slipper from the seraglio, a Moorish yataghan, a Tartar idol,
to the soldier's tobacco pouch, to the priest's ciborium, and the
plumes that once adorned a throne. This extraordinary combination was
rendered yet more bizarre by the accidents of lighting, by a multitude
of confused reflections of various hues, by the sharp contrast of
blacks and whites. Broken cries seemed to reach the ear, unfinished
dramas seized upon the imagination, smothered lights caught the eye. A
thin coating of inevitable dust covered all the multitudinous corners
and convolutions of these objects of various shapes which gave highly
picturesque effects.
First of all, the stranger compared the three galleries which
civilization, cults, divinities, masterpieces, dominions, carousals,
sanity, and madness had filled to repletion, to a mirror with numerous
facets, each depicting a world. After this first hazy idea he would
fain have selected his pleasures; but by dint of using his eyes,
thinking and musing, a fever began to possess him, caused perhaps by
the gnawing pain of hunger.
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