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Down in the cobble-paved street below they watched for awhile the long line of drays and motor trucks that bumped all night into a vast cavern lit by electricity, where crates and barrels and merchandise of all kinds were piled, marked American Expeditionary Forces; cases of electrical machinery from some factory in Ohio, parts of automobiles, gun-carriages, bath-tubs, hospital supplies, bales of cotton, cases of canned food, grey metal tanks full of chemical fluids.
Add to such an ensemble a vagrant multitude of rose, honeysuckle, clematis, and wistaria vines, all blooming in full rivalry of perfume and color; insert in some of the corners and beneath some of the older casements archaic bits of sculpture strange barbaric features with beards of Assyrian correctness and forms clad in the rigid draperies of the early Jumieges period of the sculptor's art; lance above the roof ridges the quaint polychrome finials of the earlier Palissy models; and crowd the rough cobble-paved courtyard with a rare and distinguished assemblage of flamingoes, peacocks, herons, cockatoos swinging from gabled windows, and game-cocks that strut about in company with pink doves and you have the famous inn of Guillaume le Conquerant!
"Au fond de la cour, troisieme a gauche," said the concierge. As yet there seemed to be nothing peculiarly perilous about the adventure. We crossed the cobble-paved courtyard and mounted an evil-smelling stone staircase, blackened here and there by the occasional gas jets. On the third landing we halted. Anastasius put up his hand and gripped mine.
He vaguely knew that they drifted along another arcade and then crossed a street to an open cobble-paved space where there were shooting-tunnels and merry-go-rounds and try-your-weights and see-how-much-you-lifts. He looked dazedly at wizen-faced lads who gathered round ice-cream stalls, and at hungry folks who ate stewed peas.
There may be stranger developments of the war than that, but if so I have not heard of them. In the centre of the cobble-paved Grande Place stood the Mairie, a two-story building in the uncompromising style characteristic of most French provincial architecture.
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