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The walls of the Pateo with their buttresses, string courses and parapet are so exactly like the older work as to suggest that they may really date from the time of Dom Duarte, and that all that Matheus Fernandes did was to build the vault, insert the windows, and form the splendid entrance to the octagon; but in any case the building was well advanced if not finished in 1509, when over the small entrance door was written, 'Perfectum fuit anno Domini 1509.
East of the fireplace a door having a wide flat ogee head leads into a small porch built in the corner of the pateo to protect the passage to the Sala das Pegas, the first of the rooms to the south of this pateo. In the angle formed by the end wall of the Sala dos Cysnes and the side of the Sala das Pegas there is a small low room now called the Sala de Dom Sebastião or do Conselho.
The first thing, therefore, done by Matheus was to build an entrance hall or pateo uniting the octagon with the church. Unless the walls of the Pateo be older than Dom Manoel's time it is impossible now to tell how Huguet, Dom Duarte's architect, meant to connect the two, perhaps by a low passage running eastwards from the central apse, perhaps not at all.
I shall die a little later, when many more of my friends are killed. Why not die now?" They would not listen. "It is night!" they cried. "The enemy's horses are spent. A determined stand may give us another chance." But it was a forlorn hope. As San Benavides lurched into the patèo, the horses of the first pursuing detachment strained up the slope between house and encampment.
She rose, and the criado hurried out, satisfied that she would follow. But Iris had no wish to meet San Benavides. If she were seen with him in the dark patèo at this late hour, fuel would be added to the fire of Carmela's foolish spite. She was aware of Carmela's covert glance watching her from the other end of the long room. What was to be done? Why not send Carmela in her stead?
Two windows light the Pateo, one looking north and one south. They are both alike, and both are thoroughly Manoelino in style. They are of two lights, with well-moulded jambs, and half-octagonal heads.
If he had merely been made the sport of a designing woman, she was ready to forgive. In a more amiable mood than she had displayed at any moment since her arrival at Las FIores, Carmela hastened along a dark corridor, crossed a bare hall, passed through a porch, and searched the shadows of the patèo for the form of her one-time lover.
On the other side of the central hollow the diapered shaft is separated from the tiers of tiny pinnacles which form the inner angle of the jamb by a broad band of carving, which for beauty of design and for delicacy of carving can scarcely be anywhere surpassed. On the Pateo side the carving is even more wonderful.
The five eastern apses, of which the largest in the centre is also twice as high as the other four, are probably the oldest part of the building, but all, except the two outer apses and the upper part of the central, have been concealed by the Pateo built by Dom Manoel to unite the church with the Capellas Imperfeitas, or unfinished chapels, beyond.
The hall is lit by five windows looking south across the entrance court to the Moorish castle on the hill beyond, and by three looking over the swan tank into the central pateo. These windows, and indeed all those in Dom João's part of the palace, are very like each other. They are nearly all of two lights never of more and are made of white marble.
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