up
one stairway, then down another, and then, as likely as not, we would
ascend again.... The labyrinthine maze led us on and ever onward....

"It is useless to come here," at length said Pez, decidedly losing
patience, "without charts and a mariner's compass. I suppose we are
now in the south wing of the palace. The roofs down there must be
those of the Hall of Columns and the outer stairway, are they not?
What a huge mass of a place!" The roofs of which he spoke were great
pyramidal shapes protected with lead, and they covered in the ceilings
on which Bayeu's frescoed cherubs cut their lively pigeon-wings and
pirouettes.

Still going on and on and onward without pause, we found ourselves
shut up in a place without exit, a considerable inclosure lighted from
the top, and we had to turn round and beat a retreat by the way we had
entered. Any one who knows the palace and its symmetrical grandeur
only from without could never divine all these irregularities that
constitute a veritable small town in its upper regions. In truth, for
an entire century there has been but one continual modifying of the
original plan, a stopping up here and an opening there, a condemning
of staircases, a widening of some rooms at the expense of others, a
changing of corridors into living-rooms and of living-rooms into
corridors, and a cutting through of partitions and a shutting up of
windows. You fall in with stairways that begin but never arrive
anywhere, and with balconies that are but the made-over roof coverings
of dwelling-places below. These dove-cotes were once stately
drawing-rooms, and on the other hand, these fine salons have been made
out of the inclosing space of a grand staircase. Then again winding
stairs are frequent; but if you should take them, Heaven knows what
would become of you; and frequent, too, are glazed doors permanently
closed, with naught behind them but silence, dust, and darkness....

"We are looking for the apartment of Don Francisco Bringas."

"Bringas? yes, yes," said an old woman; "you're close to it. All you
have got to do is, go down the first circular stairway you come to,
and then make a half-turn. Bringas? yes to be sure; he's sacristan of
the chapel."

"Sacristan,--he? What is the matter with you? He is head clerk of the
Administrative Department."

"Oh, then he must be lower down, just off the terrace. I suppose you
know your way to the fountain?"

"No, not we."

"You know the stairs called t