Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/231

 With the ceilings and walls, and ornamented with lines of gold. These lines also panel the walls, and outline doors and windows.

The azotea, a notable feature in the architecture of the Aztecs, still adorns these square-topped buildings. At the capital they are constructed of brick, and form a delightful promenade at all seasons. As the houses are joined together, one may walk over the entire square, as I had the pleasure of doing.

The study of General Palacio contains, perhaps, one of the finest collections of books and manuscripts in the republic. He possesses a large number of the original documents of the Inquisition handsomely bound; also a valuable foreign library, comprising books in many languages. The door of the case containing the books of the Inquisition opens over a winding stairway, and the carpet is fitted to a nicety over the semicircle which opens and closes with the door, giving ingress and egress to the private study below. When the General opened the door of this case, I came near going headlong below, and the thought flashed through my mind that I was verily descending to the vaults of the Inquisition, not knowing that the door of the bookcase was also that of the dark stairway. I was, however, rescued by my friends, and made the descent in the usual way. I would here remark that these spiral stairways are a prominent feature of Mexican architecture.

In the room below there is a handsome case containing the swords of General Francisco Xavier Mina and Vicente Guerrero; the feathers—pink and white—worn by the Emperor Iturbide on his hat when entering the city in 1821; a bronze cast of Napoleon; and the original sentence of Picaluga, who betrayed Guerrero into the hands of his enemies, besides many Indian curios and bric-a-brac. In another room were the chair of Hidalgo and the saddle that Maximilian rode the day he was captured.

Some idea of the immense collection of books, manuscripts, legal documents, and literary works of General Palacio may be gained, when I say that eight handsome rooms in this grand house are devoted exclusively by him to his scientific and literary pursuits—the large