The majority of those richly-robed gallants were strangers to him as well as the ladies, but whoever they were, whether mortal men or "spirits from the vasty deep," they were in the tallest sort of clover just then.

Evidently they knew it, too, and seemed to be on the best of terms with themselves and all the world, and laughed, and flirted, and flattered, with as much perfection as so many ball-room Apollos of the present day.
Still no one ascended the golden and crimson throne, though many of the ladies and gentlemen fluttering about it were arrayed as royally as any common king or queen need wish to be.

They promenaded up and down, arm in arm; they seated themselves in the carved and gilded chairs; they gathered in little groups to talk and laugh, did everything, in short, but ascend the throne; and the solitary spectator up above began to grow intensely curious to know who it was for.

Their conversation he could plainly hear, and to say that it amazed him, would be to use a feeble expression, altogether inadequate to his feelings.

Not that it was the remarks they made that gave his system each a shook, but the names by which they addressed each other.