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The town was like a Maltese cross in shape, the arms of the cross being wide streets, each leading to a gate in the fortifications; Porte d'Oran, Porte de Tlemcen, Porte de Mascarra, and Porte de Daya; and the one great charm of the place seemed to be in its trees; giant planes which made arbours across the streets, giving a look of dreaming peace, despite the rattle of wheels on roughly set paving-stones.
They had been a part of the sky-line of Rheims; then a shell removed them and another roof fifteen feet lower down became the sky-line. I walked to the edge of the city, to the northeast, but at the outskirts all the streets were barricaded with carts and paving-stones, and when I wanted to pass forward to the French batteries the officers in charge of the barricades refused permission.
"In short, sir, this is a matter of feeling," I concluded, "and nothing will prevent my going to Edinburgh." If I had fired a pistol in his ear he could not have been more startled. "To Edinburgh?" he repeated. "Edinburgh? where the very paving-stones know you!" "Then is the murder out!" said I. "But, Mr. Romaine, is there not sometimes safety in boldness?
This question, frightful in itself, becomes appalling when we note that these dwelling-houses are shut in on the side towards the Rue de Richelieu by marshy ground, by a sea of tumbled paving-stones between them and the Tuileries, by little garden-plots and suspicious-looking hovels on the side of the great galleries, and by a desert of building-stone and old rubbish on the side towards the old Louvre.
Men told once more the story of the Russian general in Manchuria, in 1904, who, when asked why fifty thousand men were marching barefoot, answered that the boots were in the pocket of Grand-Duke Vladimir! They told again the story of the cases of "shells" for the Manchurian army which were intercepted in the nation's capital, en route to Moscow, and found to contain paving-stones!
There was a silver mist across the hills, when Gifford led his horse out of the barn the next morning, and the little sharp paving-stones in the stable-yard, with thin lines of grass between them, were shining with dew. The morning-glories about the kitchen porch had flung their rosy horns toward the east, as though to greet the sunrise. Sarah stood under them, surveying the young man regretfully.
It was an overturned wagon; his foot recognized pools of water, gullies, and paving-stones scattered and piled up. A barricade had been begun there and abandoned. He climbed over the stones and found himself on the other side of the barrier. He walked very near the street-posts, and guided himself along the walls of the houses.
The lantern has a light only in front, and catches your eye as it glides along two or three inches above the paving-stones, so that you see the figure in the shadow behind it but dimly.
Over this part of the route were occasional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian Way, whose paving-stones still clung to their places with Roman tenacity. Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desolation, glided in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves.
"The baker Heng-cho is desirous of becoming one of those who select the paving-stones and regulate the number of hanging lanterns for the district lying around the Three-tiered Pagoda.
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