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Updated: May 18, 2025
The gutter on the shippon splashing its overflow on the flags of the yard, the hens crowding dejectedly within the open door of the henhouse, and the water lying green between the cobble-stones of the path. Nothing could be done in the garden. The sodden flowers would not be fit for to-morrow's market. The pony had cast its shoe and must be shod before next day.
"Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced, but essentially unchanged in its perfection, before you. That slight and delicate-looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected to. It has rattled for years over the cobble-stones of a rough city pavement.
The same plaster-work arch repeats itself occasionally in the rough stone- and mortar-work of the houses, all of an inferior quality, short-lived and rebuilt again and again on the débris of successive years, until they stand in time right above the cobble-stones of the narrow streets.
The long windows are guarded by significant iron bars, like the dwelling-houses throughout this country and in Havana. Sometimes on the better class of houses this iron work is rendered quite ornamental. The narrow streets are kept scrupulously clean, and are paved with cobble-stones which we were told were brought by ships from the coast of New England, and have a gutter running down the middle.
The carriage was rattling along the Rue Lafayette, over the cobble-stones, and the inmates, though their faces were close together, had to shout in order to be heard. "Of the police," was the reply. "Of the high police. I fancy that monsieur's affair is political?" "Why should you fancy that?" "Because my comrade and I are not engaged on other cases. The criminal receives very different treatment.
Somewhere behind Red Lion Court, however, he noticed a place where some energetic citizen had cleared away the snow for a space of about twenty yards, leaving the wet, glistening cobble-stones. He thought little of this as he passed it, only plunging into yet another arm of the maze.
Quickly going out I find that, although I left it standing on the narrow apology for a sidewalk, it is in imminent danger of coming to grief at the instance of a broadly laden donkey, which, with his load, veritably takes up the whole narrow street, including the sidewalks, as he slowly picks his way along through mud-holes and protruding cobble-stones.
Though the ways are such that no donkey can be ridden without stumbling among cobble-stones and pitfalls, and thereby running a risk of pitching the rider off the insecure pack into a refuse-heap, it was impossible for a European, in his eyes, to walk and to maintain his dignity at the same time.
And in the gloomiest of them all there is no odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses, of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be the soft and tender grass of Araby the Blest.
When the last quavering note has come from the great circular horn, the man walks slowly across the wet cobble-stones to the obelisk, where I watch him wind another blast just like the first, and then another, and then a third, immediately after which he walks briskly away and disappears down a turning.
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