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The sun was pouring down a yellow autumnal ray into the square of the cloisters, beaming upon a scanty plot of grass in the centre, and lighting up an angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of dusky splendor. From between the arcades the eye glanced up to a bit of blue sky or a passing cloud, and beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbey towering into the azure heaven.
The buildings are very extensive, and though now ruinous, bear evidence of great beauty in the architecture: light galleries, supported by slender columns, long cool arcades, screened squares and terraced walks, are the principal features.
As you brush through the long grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo to their music.
My poor little golden-locks, when you are grown a fair woman I trust you may know as little of it as you do to-day. I went up the Rue Soufliot, and entered the stuffy courtyard on the stroke of noon. The morning lectures were over. Beneath the arcades a few scattered students were walking up and down. I avoided them for fear of meeting a friend and having to talk.
Other parties were busy at the same game in other parts of the open space before the shop, which served as the great square for the colony. Under the arcades in front of the shop a fandango was going on, though it was quite early in the afternoon.
In the centre is a lantern, at the height of one hundred and sixty feet under the key-stone, and it is supported by four large pillars, each being thirty eight feet in circumference, and composed of thirty one columns, which are grouped together; above the arcades of the nave, there is a very narrow gallery. The edifice is lighted by one hundred and thirty windows.
But this law seems to have been enforced no more than many others are on either side of the ocean, for the "nuisance" stood till 1821, when the greater part of it, the timbers having rotted, fell of its own accord. The "Dark Row" is the only one of these strange arcades that is closed from the light, for it forms a kind of tunnel through which the footwalk goes.
This decoration varies in every bay, and is thought to be a later insertion. It is noteworthy that the triforium arcades open into the aisles as well as into the nave, an unusual arrangement, which seems, however, here to be part of the design of the twelfth century. This opinion is supported by the existence of the narrow gallery, now blocked up, in the thickness of the wall.
Some stars were shining above the rocky, grey ridge, spotted with black, and their dim light revealed the square of the cloister, the scattered shrubs, the mighty tower of Abate Umberto, the arcades, the old walls, which had stood for nine centuries, and the double row of little stone friars ascending in procession upon the arch of the great gate where Don Clemente stood, lost in contemplation.
On leaving Ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of which was occupied by the ancient town of Serravalle, resting on arcades, the architecture of which denoted that it was built during the Middle Ages. Near it I remarked an old castle, which formerly commanded the pass, one of the finest ruins of the kind I had ever seen.
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