Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 03.djvu/24

6 THE WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE.

that had been prepared for him, and of the almost fierce joy with which he flung aside his rough leathern tunic and coarse sheepskin cloak. He missed, indeed, at times the fine freedom of his forest life, and was always apt to chafe at the tedious Court ceremonies that occupied so much of each day, but the wonderful palace-Joyeuse, as they called it-of which he now found himself lord, seemed to him to be a new world fresh-fashioned for his delight; and as soon as he could escape from the council-board or audience-chamber, he would run down the great staircase, with its lions of gilt bronze and its steps of bright porphyry, and wander from room to room, and from corridor to corridor, like one who was seeking to find in beauty an anodyne from pain, a sort of restoration from sickness. Upon these journeys of discovery, as he would call them and, indeed, they were to him real voyages through a marvellous land, he would sometimes be accompanied by the slim, fair haired Court pages, with their floating mantles, and gay fluttering ribands; but more often he would be alone, feeling through a certain quick instinet, which was almost a divination, that the