s palace at right angles.

On this occasion no majestic outlines rewarded us. Only for its interior
is the cathedral famous. All doors were locked and barred. We knocked
for admission. These wonderful buildings should be open at night as well
as by day, and some of their finest effects are lost by this tyrannical
custom. But we knocked in vain; ghostly echoes answered us. Ghosts pass
through doors; we never heard that the most accommodating ghost ever
opened them to mortals. It was the great south doorway at which we
appealed--the Apostles' Doorway--and in the darkness we could just trace
its fine deeply-recessed arch. Above the cathedral rose its one solitary
pagan tower, shadowy and unreal against the night sky.

A broad, magnificent, apparently endless flight of steps such as few
cathedrals possess faced the west front. To-night we could see nothing
beyond of the town and river, the great stretch of country and far-off
Pyrenees we knew must be there. All this must wait for the morning. Nor
should we have to wait long, for night and the moments were flying. The
glare had died out of the sky; shows and booths had put out their
lights; the crowd had gone home. Gerona might now truly be likened to a
dead city.

No sound disturbed the stillness but the cry of the watchmen in
different parts of the town. One proclaimed the time and weather and
another took up the tale; sometimes a discordant duet rose upon the
air. We heard it all distinctly from our citadel above the world.

[Illustration: APOSTLES' DOORWAY, CATHEDRAL: GERONA.]

As we looked, one of them passed in slow contemplation at the foot of
the long flight of steps--steps nearly as broad as the cathedral itself.
His staff struck the ground, his light flashed shadows upon the houses.
The effect was weird. Heavy footsteps echoed right and left through the
narrow streets, in fitting accompaniment to his monotonous chant. We had
long grown familiar with these old watchmen, who come laden with an
atmosphere of the past. They are in harmony with these towns of ancient
outlines, suggesting days when perhaps the faintest glimmer of an oil
lamp only made darkness more hideous; days when their office was no
sinecure as now, but one of danger and responsibility.

The cathedral clock struck eleven, and when the last faint vibration had
died upon the air we turned to go. It seemed a great many hours since we
had risen in the darkness of the Narbonne misty morning, H. C. ha