1 - 3 from 3
This colloquy had taken place in the middle of Piazza San Marco, always, as a great social saloon, a smooth-floored, blue-roofed chamber of amenity, favourable to talk; or rather, to be exact, not in the middle, but at the point where our pair had paused by a common impulse after leaving the great mosque-like church.
"Lighting our candles we found ourselves standing on a mound of pure onyx, and on looking around could see we were in an immense cavern, whose walls sparkled and glittered as if studded with diamonds. Going down twenty feet we found a smooth-floored room that measured three hundred feet in length, twenty five feet in width, and thirty feet in height.
Except in the coldest of weather it is not necessary to renew the fire in such a stove more than once daily, and one armful of wood is the standard fuel consumption at each firing. Another of the fire-boxes in the main stove is a large smooth-floored and vaulted opening with a little front porch roofed by a hood leading into the chimney.