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The persons of whom Berenger inquired the way all uncapped most respectfully, and replied with much courtesy; but when the hotel of the English ambassador had been pointed out to him, he hardly believed it, so foul and squalid was the street, where a large nail-studded door occupied a wide archway. Here was a heavy iron knocker, to which Osbert applied himself.
And then in perfect silence they began to ascend a path. Presently it stopped abruptly. They had come up perhaps not fifty feet, when their way was barred by a great nail-studded door. "Hist!" said Vasili softly, and instantly it was opened from within, and Dmitry peered anxiously at them. "Ah, the saints be blessed, the Excellency is safe," he said. But they must not delay a minute, he added.
This afternoon it wore a cheerless face; most of the blinds were still down, and the dwelling might have been unoccupied, for any sign of human activity that the eye could catch. There was no porch at the main entrance, and the heavy nail-studded door greeted a visitor somewhat sombrely. On the front of a gable stood the words 'Nisi Dominus.
They passed through the hall, through the company of dogs who seemed to like everybody except Henry and the delegate from Haiti, and thence along a sunny, airy corridor which led up to a nail-studded, triple-locked oak door, behind an ecclesiastical leather curtain.
Upon these areas, which are open to the sky, the inner doors and windows of the dwellings open, the second story being furnished with a walk and balustrade running round the patio. Heavy, nail-studded doors shut off this domestic area from the street at night. It is not safe to leave anything outside the house after dark that a man can lift. It is sure to be stolen, if so exposed.
It does not take the visitor long to notice that he is in a great archæological museum. The streets are crooked and narrow, so narrow that the tiny patch of sky above seems more brilliant than ever and farther away, while on each side are gloomy houses with but few windows, and monstrous, nail-studded doors.
For a moment they both lingered there, irresolute; and then Jervis, stepping forward, lifted the great iron handle of the black oak, nail-studded door. But the door remained shut, and he turned round with the words, "It's still closed. We shan't be able to get in. I'm sorry."
The thick nail-studded doors, clamped with huge bolts and bars, stood wide open; no servant was on the threshold to bid him enter, and for a moment he hesitated, uncertain whether to ring the bell, or to turn back and go away, when suddenly Mrs. Spruce emerged from a shadowy corner leading to the basement, and hailed his appearance with an exclamation of evident relief.
There was little more to do than to cross the street, and Sir Edmund hurried her through the flagged and dirty yard, and the dim, foul hall, filled with fumes of smoke and beer, where melancholy debtors held out their hands, idle scapegraces laughed, heavy degraded faces scowled, and evil sounds were heard, up the stairs to a nail-studded door, where Anne shuddered to hear the heavy key turned by the coarse, rude-looking warder, only withheld from insolence by the presence of a magistrate.
On his right hand was a grey stone wall, worn and tottering with age, and overhung with green creepers and shrubs, reaching over and hanging down from the other side, and let into it, close to him, was a low nail-studded door of monastic shape, half hidden by a luxurious drooping shrub, from amongst the foliage of which peeped out star-like clusters of soft scarlet flowers.
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