Manito eBooks

He had created a
gem. The Old Town was a symphony in emerald and coral.
So it remained. The inhabitants grew to be proud of their rosy citadel;
it was an unwritten law among them that every new house should adapt
itself to this tone. For the rest, there was not much building done
after his death, with the exception of a few isolated villas that
sprang up, despite his old commands, in the neighbourhood. And the
decline in population once more set in. Men forsook the place--all save
the peasantry who tilled the surrounding fields. Towers and battlements
crumbled to earth; roadways heaved uneasily with grassy tufts that
sprouted in the chinks of the old paving-blocks. Sometimes at decline
of day a creaking hay-waggon would lumber along, bending towards a
courtyard in whose moss-grown recesses you discerned stacks of golden
maize and pumpkins; apples and plum-trees, nodding drowsily over walls,
littered the streets with snowy blossoms or fallen leaves. Commercial
life was extinct. The few remaining shopkeepers wore an air of
slumberous benevolence.


Pages:
142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166