The long rococo halls

The long rococo halls, giddy with plush and whorled designs in gold, were people with Roman fragments, white and disassociated; a runner's leg, the chilly half-turned head of a matron stricken at the bosom, the blind bold sockets of the eyes given a pupil by every shifting shadow so that what they looked upon awas an act of the sun. The great salon was of walnut. Over the fireplace hung impressive copies of the Medici shield and, beside them, the Austrian bird.

--Djuna Barnes, from Nightwood (1936)