Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/469



EX-CAPITAL OF PARAGUAY. 439

Venice. In the second story heavy pilasters, forming ten arches, make a deep verandah, equally efficacious against sun and rain, and provided with strong wooden balconies. The outlying sentry-boxes and the large flag-staff are painted tricolor, and remind us that wearing the national colours was once obligatory.

South of the Cabildo, and facing west, is the terrible " Palace " of Dr. Francia. It was originally a retreat for Jesuits' lay brethren, and after their expulsion it became the Government House. The whitewashed ground-floor tenement has verandahs about eight feet broad, with eighteen columns fronting the river, and ten facing the main square. These pillars, circular in the fayade and angular at the cor- ners, support heavy hard-wood beams, on which rest rafters, laths, and tiles. All the windows are jealously barred. It is literally hemmed in by barracks, the largest lying to the west, opposite the main entrance ; and there was hardly any difference between the palace of the Dictator and the quar- ters of his Prsetorians, Formerly it was backed by the public gaol, of which we read horrid descriptions ; and all the barracks had State prisons, " grillos/^ oubliettes, and underground ^^ puisards.^^

Facing the " Palace," on the opposite side of the square, is the new cathedral. It was built in 1845 by the elder Lopez upon the site of a chapel which he pulled down. Seen in profile, it is the normal barn, with the three distinct tiled slopes of nave, aisle, and sacristy or verandah. The fa9ade, approached by a spacious atrio and steps of brick and stone slabs, has two white towers banded with red ; the pilasters are in low relief, the weathercocks are extravagant, and the Cross rests upon the arms of the Republic. The doors are usually shut ; but a few Franciscans, with neuter-sex coun- tenances, hover about the building like birds of prey. The interior is a gloomy barn, whose piers support a flat roof