When one suddenly sees so much that is new, he cannot manage to treasure it all in his memory.  But at least the boy could recall that he had seen stairway gables on the various landings, which bore images of the Christ and his Apostles; gables, where there were images in niche after niche all along the wall; gables that were inlaid with multi-coloured bits of glass, and gables that were striped and checked with white and black marble.  As the boy admired all this, a sudden sense of haste came over him.  “Anything like this my eyes have never seen before.  Anything like this, they would never see again,” he said to himself.  And he began to run in toward the city—­up one street, and down another.

The streets were straight and narrow, but not empty and gloomy, as they were in the cities with which he was familiar.  There were people everywhere.  Old women sat by their open doors and spun without a spinning-wheel—­only with the help of a shuttle.  The merchants’ shops were like market-stalls—­opening on the street.  All the hand-workers did their work out of doors.  In one place they were boiling crude oil; in another tanning hides; in a third there was a long rope-walk.

If only the boy had had time enough he could have learned how to make all sorts of things.  Here he saw how armourers hammered out thin breast-plates; how turners tended their irons; how the shoemakers soled soft, red shoes; how the gold-wire drawers twisted gold thread, and how the weavers inserted silver and gold into their weaving.

But the boy did not have the time to stay.  He just rushed on, so that he could manage to see as much as possible before it would all vanish again.

The high wall ran all around the city and shut it in, as a hedge shuts in a field.  He saw it at the end of every street—­gable-ornamented and crenelated.  On the top of the wall walked warriors in shining armour; and when he had run from one end of the city to the other, he came to still another gate in the wall.  Outside of this lay the sea and harbour.  The boy saw olden-time ships, with rowing-benches straight across, and high structures fore and aft.  Some lay and took on cargo, others were just casting anchor.  Carriers and merchants hurried around each other.  All over, it was life and bustle.

But not even here did he seem to have the time to linger.  He rushed into the city again; and now he came up to the big square.  There stood the cathedral with its three high towers and deep vaulted arches filled with images.  The walls had been so highly decorated by sculptors that there was not a stone without its own special ornamentation.  And what a magnificent display of gilded crosses and gold-trimmed altars and priests in golden vestments, shimmered through the open gate!  Directly opposite the church there was a house with a notched roof and a single slender, sky-high tower.  That was probably the courthouse.  And between the courthouse and the cathedral, all around the square, stood the beautiful gabled houses with their multiplicity of adornments.