e and dark red are
the only colors to be seen. From a distance all the houses produce an
effect of black trimmed with strips of linen, and present an
appearance partly festal, partly funereal, leaving one in doubt
whether they enliven or depress. At first sight I felt inclined to
laugh: it seemed impossible that these houses were not playthings and
that serious people could live inside them. I should have said that
after the fete for which they had been constructed they must disappear
like paper frames built for a display of fireworks.

While I was vaguely regarding the street I saw a house which amazed
me. I thought I must be mistaken: I looked at it more closely,--looked
at the houses near it, compared them with the first house and then
with each other, and even then I believed that it was an optical
illusion. I turned hastily down a side street, and still I seemed to
see the same thing. At last I was persuaded that the fault was not
with my eyes, but with the entire city.

All Rotterdam is like a city that has reeled and rocked in an
earthquake, and has still remained standing, though apparently on the
verge of ruin.

All the houses--the exceptions in each street are so few they can be
counted on one's fingers--are inclined more or less, and the greater
number lean so much that the roof of one projects half a meter beyond
that of the next house if it happens to be straight or but slightly
inclined. The strangest part of it all is, that adjoining houses lean
in different directions; one will lean forward as if it were going to
topple over, another backward, some to the right, others to the left.
In some places, where six or seven neighboring houses all lean
forward, those in the middle being most inclined, they form a curve,
like a railing that is bent by the pressure of a crowd. In some places
two houses which stand close together bend toward each other, as if
for mutual support. In certain streets for some distance all the
houses lean sideways, like trees which the wind has blown one against
the other; then again, they all lean in the opposite direction, like
another row of trees bent by a contrary wind. In some places there is
a regularity in the inclination, which makes the effect less
noticeable. On certain crossways and in some of the smaller streets
there is an indescribable confusion, a real architectural riot, a
dance of houses, a disorder that seems animated. There are houses that
appear to fall forward,