There--waving in the
morning breezes, charged on every leaf with their burden of pure and
welcome moisture--rose the lofty pine-trees, basking in the recurrence
of the new day's beautiful and undying youth, and rising in reproving
contrast before the exhausted allurements of luxury and the perverted
creations of art which burdened the tables of the hall within.
After a hasty survey of the apartment, the freedman appeared to be on
the point of quitting it in despair, when the noise of a falling dish,
followed by several partly suppressed and wholly confused exclamations
of affright, caught his ear. He once more approached the banqueting-
table, retrimmed a lamp that hung near him, and taking it in his hand,
passed to the side of the room whence the disturbance proceeded. A
hideous little negro, staring in ludicrous terror at a silver oven, half
filled with bread, which had just fallen beside him, was the first
object he discovered. A few paces beyond the negro reposed a beautiful
boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, still sleeping by the side of his
lyre; and farther yet, stretched in an uneasy slumber on a silken couch,
lay the identical object of the freedman's search--the illustrious
author of the Nightingale Sauce.
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