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Updated: June 12, 2025
"As soon as he found I was not asking for a kept woman, he became more friendly and came as far as the passage with me. He was a tall, thin man with white whiskers, the manners of a beadle and majestic movements. "I climbed up a long spiral staircase, whose balusters I did not venture to touch, and I gave three discreet knocks at the left-hand door on the fifth story.
Up stairs she clattered, hitting the balusters with her cane. Good Mr. Lee was preaching from the text, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," and people could not imagine who was naughty enough to make such a noise outside thump, thump, thump. "Who's that a-talkin'?" thought Flyaway, startled by Mr. Lee's voice. "O, ho! that's the prayer-man a-talkin'. He makes me kind o' 'fraid!"
I did hope to have a good night's rest, but I must keep on moving. This is no time to be asleep." He went into the passage, and, leaning over the balusters, called, "Mme. Alexandre! I say, Mme. Alexandre!" The hostess of the Archangel, the portly wife of Fanferlot the Squirrel, evidently had not been to bed. This fact struck Prosper. She appeared, obsequious, smiling, and eager to please.
There are no regular lines about the castle except in the centre building, from which projects a stately portico with double flights of curving steps, and round balusters slender at their base and broadening at the middle. The main building is surrounded by clock-towers and sundry modern turrets, with galleries and vases more or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear Nathan!
"I do," he said. "I like you, and I don't care a damn about your hat. Is that plain?" Captain Elisha's reply was delivered over the balusters in the hall. "Hi!" he called. "Hi, Mrs. Hepton." The landlady had been anxiously waiting. She ran from the dining room to the foot of the stairs. "Yes?" she cried. "What is it?" "It's a bargain," said the captain. "I'm ready to engage passage."
There may be a broad landing with a window and window-seat, if there is a real view, but the landing-seat that is built for no especial purpose is worse than useless. It is not at all necessary to have the stairs carpeted, if the treads are broad enough, and turned balusters painted white with a mahogany hand rail are in scheme. Such a staircase adds much to the home-quality of a house.
The fairy-tale went on next day, when, after wending our way through the dirty, crooked little streets, we crossed a courtyard and descended a long subterranean stairway to emerge on a magnificent terrace with a heavy marble balustrade, whence flights of steps led down to lower grades, amid statues, urns, vases, fountains, reservoirs, camellias in bloom mingled with laurel and myrtle and laurustinums covered with creamy flowers, cypresses tall as cathedral spires, ilex avenues, and broad straight walks between huge walls of box: the whole space was filled with the song of nightingales, the tinkle of falling water, with whiffs of aromatic shrubs and the breath of hidden roses and violets; a princely garden, a royal pleasaunce, but in exquisite disorder and neglect; the shrubbery too thick and straggling, the flowers straying beyond their rightful boundaries, the statues stained and moss-grown, the balusters entangled in clinging luxuriance, the fountains dripping through fern and maiden-hair Nature supreme, as one always sees her in this land of Art.
Past a room where a drunken woman lay sleeping with her head on a table, a child pulling at her dress and crying, up a stairway with broken balusters and breaking steps, through a landing, upstairs again, and up still farther until they reached the top. Glad stopped before a door and shook the handle, crying out: "'S only me, Polly. You can open it."
This gallery at the head of the great staircase was dimly lighted, and the hall below threw up a glimmer, reflected in the oaken balusters and doors of the closed rooms, and dying away in the half-lit gloom above.
"Peg!"... Forrester turned away. He put his hand over his eyes for a moment, trying desperately to control himself, but his voice was thick as he answered mechanically: "She died in hospital half an hour ago." There was a tragic silence, then Faith stumbled backwards, catching at the balusters to save herself from falling. Her face was frozen with horror.
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