ct, the old Stadthaus in which was formerly the Hanse hall,
rose suddenly before me.

It occupies two sides of the square. Imagine, in front of the
Marienkirche, whose spires and roof of oxydized copper rise above it, a
lofty brick facade, blackened by time, bristling with three bell-towers
with pointed copper-covered roofs, having two great empty rose-windows,
and emblazoned with escutcheons inscribed in the trefoils of its ogives,
double-headed black eagles on a gold field, and shields, half gules,
half argent, ranged alternately, and executed in the most elaborate
fashion of heraldry.

To this facade is joined a palazzino of the Renaissance, in stone and of
an entirely different style, its tint of grayish-white marvelously
relieved by the dark-red background of old brick-work. This building,
with its three gables, its fluted Ionic columns, its caryatides, or
rather its Atlases (for they are human figures), its semicircular
window, its niches curved like a shell, its arcades ornamented with
figures, its basement of diamond-shaped stones, produces what I may call
an architectural discord that is most unexpected and charming. We meet
very few edifices in the north of Europe of this style and epoch.

In the facade, the old German style prevails: arches of brick, resting
upon short granite columns, support a gallery with ogive-windows. A row
of blazons, inclined from right to left, bring out their brilliant color
against the blackish tint of the wall. It would be difficult to form an
idea of the character and richness of this ornamentation.

This gallery leads into the main building, a structure than which no
scene-painter, seeking a medieval decoration for an opera, ever invented
anything more picturesque and singular. Five turrets, coiffed with roofs
like extinguishers, raise their pointed tops above the main line of the
facade with its lofty ogive-windows--unhappily now most of them
partially bricked up, in accordance, doubtless, with the exigencies of
alterations made within. Eight great disks, having gold backgrounds, and
representing radiating suns, double-headed eagles, and the shields,
gules and argent, the armorial bearings of Luebeck, are spread out
gorgeously upon this quaint architecture. Beneath, arches supported upon
short, thick pillars yawn darkly, and from far within there comes the
gleam of precious metals, the wares of some goldsmith's shop.

Turning back toward the square again, I notice, rising ab