The Craze of Christina — page 183: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Craze of Christina. 179 “Tadn. Hotel de |’Oiseau.”’ He set off full of new hope. lLaén was com- paratively near; he would get there by one o'clock, and he would find her at last. He did not get there till nearly two, the train being an abnormally slow one, with two changes of carriages. Still he got there at last. Laon is one of the most beautifully situated towns imaginable. It stands upon the summit of a very high hill, crowned by the quaint and beautifully pierced towers of a lovely cathedral. From all the four corners of these towers, tier above tier, look out the stone images of huge placid-faced horned cattle, the cattle who, as tradition says, dragged up the stones from the plains below, of which the ancient church is built, and who are therefore forever commemo- rated and incorporated in the structure they helped to build. Around the cathedral the narrow streets cluster thickly, and walled ram- parts surround the whole city, which commands a wide and magnificent view of vast and fertile plains stretching away on three sides of it. So immediately beneath the ramparts that one can almost drop a stone down upon its roof is the railway station and the modern suburb which surrounds it. The hillis so steep and the road zigzags in such frequent gradients Comichooksnco