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He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims for

the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with

"thirteen hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and

blazoned with the king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one

butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the arms

of the queen, the whole worked in gold." Catherine de Medicis had

a mourning-bed made for her of black velvet powdered with

crescents and suns. Its curtains were of damask, with leafy

wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground, and

fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood

in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black

velvet upon cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered

caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. The state bed of

Sobieski, King of Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade

embroidered in turquoises with verses from the Koran.