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Updated: June 1, 2025
On the day of her festival its rooms are thrown open, every memorial of the gentle saint is exhibited, lights burn on numerous altars, flowers deck the passages, leaves are strewn in the chapel, on the stairs, in the entrance-court; gay carpets, figured tapestry and crimson silks hang over the door, and crowds of people go in and out, and kneel before the relics or the pictures of the dear saint of Rome, and greet on each altar, and linger in these chambers, like kinsfolk met on a birthday to rejoice together.
In the deep shadow of the entrance-court the open one, through which the light streamed radiantly, seemed far distant, and when the great bell sent clanging echoes from court to court, gondoliers in undress liveries, who were lazily lounging and chatting, sprang to a show of activity over all those finishing touches of polish and nicety which had been achieved long before; and the lithe figures coming and going, throwing themselves into graceful attitudes over their semblance of labor, exchanging joyous sallies in anticipation of the evening's revelry, awoke a contagious merriment.
Grim doors, with conspicuous scrolled hinges, having high up on each side of them a small window defended by iron bars, opened on a groined entrance-court, empty of everything but a massive lamp-iron suspended from the centre of the groin. A smaller grim door on the left-hand admitted to the stone staircase, and the rooms on the ground-floor.
Fellow-feeling of some kind, or curiosity, brought the two old men together in a central space in the great entrance-court. A few blades of grass were growing in the crevices of the pavement; a terrible silence reigned in that great house.
The general plan is that of a central structure connecting two turreted wings which enclose a spacious entrance-court. From the court the visitor enters a grand hall or vestibule, from which every part of the building is reached. At either end is a spacious library-room. Stone stairways lead from each end of the vestibule to the mezzanine, or half-story, and the second-story landings.
The remains of an observatory exist, and the outlines of what is supposed to have been a temple have also been unearthed, so that we have here a complete plan of the palace. Altogether 31 courts and 198 chambers have been discovered. A, Steps. B, Chief portal. C, Chief entrance-court. J, Centre court of building. K, Chief court of royal residence. L, Portal with carved bulls as guards.
Besides these, I commission you to get me some medallions to let into the walls of my little entrance-court, and two engraved stone-curbs. Mind you don't engage your library to anyone, however keen a lover you may find; for I am hoarding up my little savings expressly to secure that resource for my old age. As to my brother, I trust that all is as I have ever wished and tried to make it.
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