, battlements, and ducal coronets. These medieval
coronets, which were repeated even on the peaks of the chimney pots,
were the everlasting decorative motif of an industrial city little
given to dreams and lusting for lucre.

Ferragut advanced through the solitary street between two rows of
freshly transplanted trees that were just sending forth their first
growth. He looked at the facades of the _torres_ made of blocks of
cement imitating the stone of the old fortresses, or with tiles which
represented fantastic landscapes, absurd flowers, bluish, glazed
nymphs.

Upon getting out of the street car he made a resolution. He would look
at the outside only of the house. Perhaps that would aid him in
discovering the woman! Then he would just continue on his way.

But on reaching the _torre_, whose number he still kept in mind, and
pausing a few seconds before its architecture of a feudal castle whose
interior was probably like that of the beer gardens, he saw the door
opening, and appearing in it the same woman that had talked with him in
the flower Rambla.

"Come in, Captain."

And the captain was not able to resist the suggestive smile of the
cook.

He found himself in a kind of hall similar to the facade with a Gothic
fireplace of alabaster imitating oak, great jars of porcelain, pipes
the size of walking-sticks, and old armor adorning the walls. Various
wood-cuts reproducing modern pictures of Munich alternated with these
decorations. Opposite the fireplace William II was displaying one of
his innumerable uniforms, resplendent in gold and a gaudy frame.

The house appeared uninhabited. Heavy soft curtains deadened every
sound. The corpulent go-between had disappeared with the lightness of
an immaterial being, as though swallowed up by the wall. While scowling
at the portrait of the Kaiser, the sailor began to feel disquieted in
this silence which appeared to him almost hostile.... And he was not
carrying arms.

The smiling woman again presented herself with the same slippery
smoothness.

"Come in, Don Ulysses."

She had opened a door, and Ferragut on advancing felt that this door
was locked behind him.

The first thing that he could see was a window, broader than it was
high, of colored glass. A Valkyrie was galloping across it, with lance
in rest and floating locks, upon a black steed that was expelling fire
through its nostrils. In the diffused light of the stained glass he
could distinguish tapestries