Opulent as the grounds were (and we have said nothing of the icehouse, bathing pool, theatre, or chapel) they were as nothing compared to the luxury to be found inside the mansion itself. Alas, time does not permit us to spend long in its rooms, so, like Flengate himself, we shall visit just a few of the most opulent.

The spacious ballroom –the largest room in the house– was dominated by glass. Suspended from the ceiling was the great chandelier with its thousand candles. Inset into the walls and the sixteen pillars were full-length mirrors; the walls at both ends were wholly taken up with reflective glass, stretching the ballroom to infinity in either direction. Glass were the champagne bottles and glass the gla… er… flutes; glass the vases and glass the massive windows. Every Monday, invitation-only dances were held, where fashionable debutantes pretended to hide behind modest fans while wearing dresses that accentuated the voluptuousness of their bosoms for the purpose of attracting eligible society beaux.

Adjoining the ballroom was the banqueting hall, the theme of which was silver. The feasts Flengate organised grew in extravagance every year, with the courses becoming more and more plentiful in quantity and more and more unusual in quality. The first he gave consisted of a relatively modest six dishes and its centrepiece was a ham. The last consisted of a hundred and eleven and went on for three days. Half his zoo was slaughtered for the blowout, including three quaggas, a warthog, six penguins and a porcupine. The five hundred and seventy-nine guests drank three thousand, one hundred and twenty-five Melchiors of wine, five thousand and ninety-one quart jugs of beer, and one thousand, one hundred and fifty-four bottles of spirits. Gout was endemic among Flengate’s coterie.