Many were the preparations immediately begun for complying with
the invitation. But the noblest of their neighbours refused to appear; not
from pride, but because of the unsuitableness and carelessness of such a
mode. With some of them it was an old condition in the tenure of their
estates, that they should go to no one's dwelling except visited in
person, and expressly solicited. Others, knowing what sort of persons
would be there, and that, from a certain physical antipathy, they could
scarcely breathe in their company, made up their minds at once not to go.
Yet multitudes, many of them beautiful and innocent as well as gay,
resolved to appear.
"Meanwhile the great rooms of the castle were got in readiness--that is,
they proceeded to deface them with decorations; for there was a solemnity
and stateliness about them in their ordinary condition, which was at once
felt to be unsuitable for the light-hearted company so soon to move about
in them with the self-same carelessness with which men walk abroad within
the great heavens and hills and clouds.
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