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Updated: June 16, 2025
All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet sleepy court-yards, having stately old houses within, as silent as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions in the Arabian Nights.
The Russian detachment had been increased by the arrival of new colonists and secretly continued its illegal existence, although the Chinese knew about it through their omnipresent system of spies. In the town no Russian or foreign citizens left their houses and all remained armed and ready to act. At night armed sentinels stood guard in all their court-yards.
The great range of halls, towers, and terraces, arches, squares, and court-yards, which, until comparatively recent days, were often described in common phrase as the New Houses of Parliament, owe their origin and their plan, although not their complete construction, to the reign of William the Fourth.
Then one understands it and loves it. O Sunday of Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my errors, I exalt thee, and I bless thee for all the joy and relief thou givest to courageous and honest labour, for the laughter of the children who greet thee with acclamation, the pride of mothers happy to dress their little ones in their best clothes in thy honour, for the dignity thou dost preserve in the homes of the poorest, the glorious raiment set aside for thee at the bottom of the old shaky chest of drawers; I bless thee especially by reason of all the happiness thou hast brought that morning to the great new house in the old faubourg.
Priests swarmed in the Alcazar, and soldiers belonging to every branch of military service, daily guarded or marched by the palace. On the journey he had met plenty of mules with gay plumes and tassels, oddly-dressed peasants and citizens. Gentlemen in brilliant court uniforms, princes and princesses he saw daily in the court-yards, on the stairs, and in the park of the palace.
The only difference between the residence of a chief and those of his subjects consisted in the number, though not in the superiority, of his court-yards. For the most part they were tenanted by women and slaves, together with flocks of sheep and goats, and abundance of pigs and poultry mixed indiscriminately. The palace of the king, however, was somewhat superior.
The towns of Angostura, Nueva Barcelona, and Mompox, where from the want of police, the streets, the great squares, and the interior of court-yards are overgrown with brushwood, are sadly celebrated for the abundance of zancudos. People born in the country, whether whites, mulattoes, negroes, or Indians, all suffer from the sting of these insects.
Well, then we must fly silently through the court-yards and the hall, let ourselves out to the terrace there are two or three ways I know, and run through the garden to the postern. Once out of these walls, we must hurry across the fields to the house of a certain miller " "Hugues? Yes." "Yes, Monsieur.
There is no more to be seen of the houses than in any other Oriental town. Lofty walls with low entrances, without windows, and with the fronts always facing the court-yards, which are planted with flowers and small trees, and generally adjoining a beautiful garden. The reception rooms are large and lofty, with whole rows of windows, forming a complete wall of glass.
A large space leading from the city itself to the royal citadel was given up to the soldiers, and there, by the side of the shady court-yards, were the houses of the police-guard and the prisons. Other soldiers were quartered in tents close to the walls of the palace itself.
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