ality the
final solemn council was held in Lisbon, but some informal meeting may
well have been held there. Now the room is low and rather dark, being
lit only by two small windows opening above the roof of the controller's
office. It is divided into two unequal parts by an arcade of three
arches, the smaller part between the arches and the south wall being
raised a step above the rest. When first built by Dom Joao this raised
part formed a covered verandah, the rest being, till about the time of
Maria I., open to the sky and forming a charming and cool retreat during
the heat of summer. The floor is of tiles and marble, and all along the
south wall runs a bench entirely covered with beautiful tiles. At the
eastern end is a large seat, rather higher than the bench and provided
with arms, doubtless for the king, and tiled like the rest.

Passing again from the Swan Hall the way leads through the porch into
the Sala das Pegas or of the magpies. The door from the porch to the
room is one of the most beautiful parts of Dom Joao's work. It is framed
as are the windows, and has shafts, capitals, abaci, and bases just like
those already described; but the arch is different. It is beautifully
moulded, but is--if one may so speak--made up of nine reversed cusps,
whose convex sides form the arch: the inner square moulding too is
enriched with ball ornament. Inside the walls are covered to half their
height with exquisite tiles of Moorish pattern, blue, green and brown on
a white ground.

On the north wall is a great white marble chimney-piece, once a present
from Pope Leo X. to Dom Manoel and brought by the great Marques de
Pombal from the ruined palace of Almeirim opposite Santarem. Two other
doors, with simple pointed heads, lead one into the dining-room, and one
into the Sala das Sereias. The Sala das Pegas, like the Swan Hall, is
called after its ceiling, for on it are painted in 136 triangular
compartments, 136 magpies, each holding in one foot a red rose and in
its beak a scroll inscribed 'Por Bem.' Possibly this ceiling, which on
each side slopes up to a flat parallelogram, is more like that painted
for Dom Joao than is that of the Swan Hall, but even here some of the
mouldings are clearly renaissance, and the painting has been touched up,
but anyhow it was already called Camera das Pegas in the time of Dom
Duarte; further, tradition tells that the magpies were painted there by
Dom Joao's orders, and why. It seems that on