United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The limes in the narrow avenue leading to the west door of the great church of St. Mary stood breathless and still. The ancient church itself looked as if it pondered gravely on what had been and what was to be; and the tall windows of the belfry, with their wooden louvres, seemed to be solemn half-shut eyes.
Little by little this half-barbaric camp in contradistinction to the more solid works of the Romans became a placefort, then a château, then a palace and, finally, as the young lady tourist said, an art museum. Well, at any rate, it was a dignified evolution. Two Louvres disappeared before the crystallization of the present rather irregularly cut gem.
It would be a very simple matter to make the wind itself automatically open and shut the louvres. The theory of the heating and ventilation of the hot rooms requires most careful study, and the particular scheme to be adopted in any new bath must be well considered with respect to the restrictions of the site.
The teeth of the winds of the sea have devoured, bit by bit, the fine sculpture of the doorway and the thin cusps of the window tracery; gray moss creeps caressingly over the worn walls in ineffectual protection; gentle vines, turned crabbed by the harsh beating of the fierce winds, clutch the crumbling buttresses, climb up over the sinking roof, reach in even at the louvres of the belfry, holding the little sanctuary safe in desperate arms against the savage warfare of the sea and sky.
Coombes was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts how it did roar up there as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the wind and send it down to ventilate the church! she was sitting at the foot of the chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.
If possible, at least two inlets should be provided, facing different ways: this with regard to the possibility of certain winds drawing the air out where it is wanted to enter. The openings should be vertical, like windows, and, in cities, furnished with a solid frame and casement, fitted with louvres of plate glass with polished edges.
May we not presume that, if such openings existed, they were guarded by louvres such as have been regarded as probably lighting the Assyrian halls, and of which a representation has already been given? The portico of the Hall of a Hundred Columns was flanked on either side by a colossal bull, standing at the inner angle of the antes, and thus in some degree narrowing the entrance.
For my part, I never could understand this love for the common-place and the hideous. I know that every one does not dwell in Alhambras, Louvres, or Parthenons, but it is so easy to do without a clock to leave the walls bare, to exist without Manrin's lithographs or Jazet's aquatints!
The two friends having agreed to leave Blaisois and Grimaud at Compiegne with the horses, resolved to take post horses; and having snatched a hasty dinner they continued their journey to Louvres. Here they found only one inn, in which was consumed a liqueur which preserves its reputation to our time and which is still made in that town. "Let us alight here," said Athos.
"No, sir, they were carried off instantly, and had not even time to tell me why; but as soon as they were gone I found this broken sword-blade, as I was helping to raise two dead men and five or six wounded ones." "'Tis still a consolation that they were not wounded," said Aramis. "Where were they taken?" asked Athos. "Toward the town of Louvres," was the reply.
Word Of The Day