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It was upon the evening of a sultry summer's day, when the sun was half-sunk behind the distant western mountains of Liddesdale, that the Lady took her solitary walk on the battlements of a range of buildings, which formed the front of the castle, where a flat roof of flag-stones presented a broad and convenient promenade.

This kitchen is, of course, used for cooking, washing, dwelling, and sleeping purposes. The walls are whitewashed, and the floor consists of flag-stones. Of luxury there is none, of comfort little. Generally the fare of the day is potatoes, with some vegetable, carrots, turnips, cabbage, or beans.

There were scattered villas and houses, here and there concentrating into a little bit of a street, paved with flag-stones from side to side, as in the city, and shadowed quite across its narrowness by the height of the houses.

It attained its maximum depth in the Rue Saint-Pierre, where it rose to the height of three feet above the flag-stones of the water-spout, and its maximum length in the Rue Saint-Sabin, where it spread out over a stretch two hundred and thirty-eight metres in length. At the beginning of this century, the sewer of Paris was still a mysterious place.

She had never entered any other part of the establishment except the chapel, and on the north front, which was reached by a long passage running with an angle from the school-hall to the chapel aisle. The square courtyard within the enclosure of these buildings was paved with gray flag-stones, and adorned in the centre by a marble fountain.

The fields were too far away to be reached in this tiring weather; and when the men and women returned home from their day's work, they sunk down in silent and languid groups on their door-steps, or on the dirty flag-stones of the causeway.

There were scattered villas and houses, here and there concentrating into a little bit of a street, paved with flag-stones from side to side, as in the city, and shadowed quite across its narrowness by the height of the houses.

However, I sometimes go there of a morning, for a bath; I am teaching my houris to swim. I must tell you that in this matter, indispensable for the comfort of the sultanas, Barbassou-Pasha designed a marvel. Under a colonnade and in its cool shade, a fine Manilla mat covers the flag-stones. The base of the inner walls is enlivened with frescoes, after Pompeian and Herculanean models.

The street was very narrow, and paved with flag-stones not quite so smooth as those of Florence; the houses are tall enough to be stately, if they were not so inconceivably dingy and shabby; but, with their half-dozen stories, they make only the impression of hovel piled upon hovel, squalor immortalized in undecaying stone.

In the spring I used to find the first green grass there, for it was warm and sunny, and I used to pick the little French pinks when they dared show their heads in the cracks of the flag-stones that were laid around the house.