Tableaux vivants were another of our
occasional modes of amusement, in which scarlet shawls, old silken
robes, ruffs, velvets, furs, and all kinds of miscellaneous trumpery
converted our familiar companions into the people of a pictorial
world. We had been thus engaged on the evening after the incident
narrated in the last chapter. Several splendid works of art--either
arranged after engravings from the old masters, or original
illustrations of scenes in history or romance--had been presented,
and we were earnestly entreating Zenobia for more.
She stood with a meditative air, holding a large piece of gauze, or
some such ethereal stuff, as if considering what picture should next
occupy the frame; while at her feet lay a heap of many-colored
garments, which her quick fancy and magic skill could so easily
convert into gorgeous draperies for heroes and princesses.
"I am getting weary of this," said she, after a moment's thought.
"Our own features, and our own figures and airs, show a little too
intrusively through all the characters we assume. We have so much
familiarity with
one another's realities, that we cannot remove ourselves, at pleasure,
into an imaginary sphere. Let us have no more pictures to-night;
but, to make you what poor amends I can, how would you like to have
me trump up a wild, spectral legend, on the spur of the moment?"
Zenobia had the gift of telling a fanciful little story, off-hand, in
a way that made it greatly more effective than it was usually found
to be when she afterwards elaborated the same production with her pen.
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