idge. A lane, for it is little more, turning from the main
street between the side walls of what were once two palaces, comes
suddenly into a small square, and from a corner of this square there is
an open stone archway leading into a court. In this court is the door,
or doors, as I may say, of the house in which Balatka lived with his
daughter Nina. Opposite to these two doors was the blind wall of
another residence. Balatka's house occupied two sides of the court,
and no other window, therefore, besides his own looked either upon it
or upon him. The aspect of the place is such as to strike with wonder a
stranger to Prague--that in the heart of so large a city there should
be an abode so sequestered, so isolated, so desolate, and yet so close
to the thickest throng of life. But there are others such, perhaps many
others such, in Prague; and Nina Balatka, who had been born there,
thought nothing of the quaintness of her abode. Immediately over the
little square stood the palace of the Hradschin, the wide-spreading
residence of the old kings of Bohemia, now the habitation of an
ex-emperor of the House of Hapsburg, who must surely find the thousand
chambers of the royal mansion all too wide a retreat for the use of his
old age. So immediately did the imperial hill tower over the spot on
which Balatka lived, that it would seem at night, when the moon was
shining as it shines only at Prague, that the colonnades of the palace
were the upper storeys of some enormous edifice, of which the broken
merchant's small courtyard formed a lower portion. The long rows of
windows would glimmer in the sheen of the night, and Nina would stand
in the gloom of the archway counting them till they would seem to be
uncountable, and wondering what might be the thoughts of those who
abode there. But those who abode there were few in number, and their
thoughts were hardly worthy of Nina's speculation. The windows of
kings' palaces look out from many chambers. The windows of the
Hradschin look out, as we are told, from a thousand. But the rooms
within have seldom many tenants, nor the tenants, perhaps, many
thoughts. Chamber after chamber, you shall pass through them by the
score, and know by signs unconsciously recognised that there is not,
and never has been, true habitation within them. Windows almost
innumerable are there, that they may be seen from the outside--and such
is the use of palaces. But Nina, as she would look, would people the
rooms