"MY DEAR TITIAN, MY GOOD VERONESE, MY WORTHY RAPHAEL.
--You can render me a very great service,--and you will do it, I am sure, with that perfect and obliging complaisance by which you are ever distinguished.
"It is to go immediately and apply yourself to the skillful hand who designed my last costumes of the fifteenth century.But the present affair is to procure modern East Indian dresses for a young man--yes, sir--for a young man,--and according to what I imagine of him, I fancy that you can cause his measure to be taken from the Antinous, or rather, from the Indian Bacchus; yes--that will be more likely.
"It is necessary that these vestments be at once of perfect propriety and correctness, magnificently rich, and of the greatest elegance.You will choose the most beautiful stuffs possible; and endeavor, above all things, that they be, or resemble, tissues of Indian manufacture; and you will add to them, for turbans and sashes, six splendid long cashmere shawls, two of them white, two red, and two orange; as nothing suits brown complexions better than those colors.
"This done (and I allow you at the utmost only two or three days), you will depart post in my carriage for Cardoville Manor House, which you know so well.The steward, the excellent Dupont, one of your old friends, will there introduce you to a young Indian Prince, named Djalma;