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The drive ended in a flagged yard, upon which our horse's hoofs made a sudden clatter, scaring a dozen ducks into pools and other coigns of vantage, and rousing the house-dog, who, with ringing chain and surly grumbles, came out blinking, to indulge in several painful barks, waiting, as dogs will, with eyes shut and nose strained in the air, for the effect of each bark, and consciously enjoying the tuneful echo.
The stones forming the right edge of the hole are coigns, and have mason-marks on their sides. At the back of the hole the masonry appears to be of some antiquity: may it be part of the foundation of the east end of Archbishop Roger's choir? There are several prints of the Cathedral, as it was before restoration, in the Ripon Museum.
There is neither statue, nor a niche for a statue, to be seen on all the outside; no carved work, no spires, towers, pinnacles, balustrades, or anything; but mere walls, buttresses, windows, and coigns necessary to the support and order of the building.
When at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and nature are confounded in one ruin.
At the south-western angle is an octagonal turret staircase, capped by a pyramidal roof rising from within a battlemented parapet, and terminating in a carved finial. This is of Perpendicular character. From the sharpness of the stone at the coigns it would seem that very extensive restoration, if not absolute rebuilding, of the walls was carried on in this part of the church.
These were sounded on the engaging topic of committee chairmanships, and one by one such coigns of congressional, not to say personal, advantage as the heads of Ways and Means, the Appropriations, the Foreign Affairs, the Naval, the Military and a number of other great sub-bodies were disposed of bartered away on the contingency always of Mr. Frost's selection to be the Speaker.
In the furtherance of this project he first stormed and captured the city, many of the buildings in which completely dominated the fort at short effective ranges. From the coigns of vantage thus gained the British artillery and infantry poured a hail of shot and shell into the doomed defences, while the cavalry hovered outside ready to pounce on those who broke cover.
With a guard acting as cowboy, shepherd dog, or convict compeller, we shuffled in a continuous line down the iron stairways and across the hall into the dining room, a cement-floored barred-window desert sown with tables in rows, seating eight men each; guards with clubs standing at coigns of vantage or pacing up and down the aisles, and in one window, commanding the whole room, a guard with a loaded rifle, licensed to shoot down any misbehaver.
I went all over the roof, on which a guard is mounted at night. At "coigns of vantage" there is a bullet-proof palisading, with peepholes through which a volley of musketry might be poured. I should fancy that extra precautions have probably been taken since the Fenian émeutes of the last ten years. Dublin swarms with soldiers, constabulary and police.
It hath been repaired and its walls whitened." She answered, "By Allah, O my lady, I heard say that the keeper of the garden had taken stuffs of a company of merchants and sold them and bought bricks and lime and plaster and stones and so forth with the price; so I asked him what he had done with all this, and he said, 'I have repaired the pavilion which lay in ruins, presently adding, 'And when the merchants sought their due of me, I said to them, 'Wait 'till the Princess visit the garden and see the repairs and they satisfy her; then will I take of her what she is pleased to bestow on me, and pay you what is your due. Quoth I, 'What moved thee to do this thing?; and quoth he, 'I saw the pavilion in ruins, the coigns thrown down and the stucco peeled from the walls, and none had the grace to repair it; so I borrowed the coin on my own account and restored the place; and I trust in the King's daughter to deal with me as befitteth her dignity. I said, 'The Princess is all goodness and generosity and will no doubt requite thee. And he did all this but in hopes of thy bounty."
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