“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark.”
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 20. Rochester says this to Jane, after he calls his home at Thornfield a “mere dungeon” and she remarks that it is a “splendid mansion.” Rochester uses a series of metaphors to compare the gilding, silk draperies, marble and polished woods to slime, cobwebs, slate and refuse chips.