The attic was empty. Miss Spencer had
mysteriously vanished.
Chapter Nineteen ROYALTY AT THE GRAND BABYLON
THE Royal apartments at the Grand Babylon are famous in the
world of hotels, and indeed elsewhere, as being, in their own way,
unsurpassed. Some of the palaces of Germany, and in particular
those of the mad Ludwig of Bavaria, may possess rooms and
saloons which outshine them in gorgeous luxury and the mere wild
fairy-like extravagance of wealth; but there is nothing, anywhere,
even on Eighth Avenue, New York, which can fairly be called
more complete, more perfect, more enticing, or - not least
important - more comfortable.
The suite consists of six chambers - the ante-room, the saloon or
audience chamber, the dining-room, the yellow drawing-room
(where Royalty receives its friends), the library, and the State
bedroom - to the last of which we have already been introduced.
The most important and most impressive of these is, of course, the
audience chamber, an apartment fifty feet long by forty feet broad,
with a superb outlook over the Thames, the Shot Tower, and the
higher signals of the South-Western Railway. The decoration of
this room is mainly in the German taste, since four out of every six
of its Royal occupants are of Teutonic blood; but its chief glory is
its French ceiling, a masterpiece by Fragonard, taken bodily from a
certain famous palace on the Loire.
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