tress was filled with the dried leaves
of the maize, and the upper one contained wool, with which the pillows
also were stuffed. The floors of dwelling rooms were generally either
paved with bricks or made of a sort of cement, composed of lime, sand
and crushed brick, the whole being beaten down with iron pounders, while
in the moist state, during three days. There were no carpets, and fresh
rushes were strewn everywhere on the floors, which in summer were first
watered, like a garden path, to lay the dust. There was no glass in the
windows of ordinary rooms, and the consequence was that during the
daytime people lived almost in the open air, in winter as well as
summer; sunshine was a necessity of existence, and sheltered courts and
cloistered walks were built like reservoirs for the light and heat.

In the rooms, ark-shaped chests stood against the walls, to contain the
ordinary clothes not kept in the general 'guardaroba.' In the deep
embrasures of the windows there were stone seats, but there were few
chairs, or none at all, in the bedrooms. At the head of each bed hung a
rough little cross of dark wood--later, as carving became more general,
a crucifix--and a bit of an olive branch preserved from Palm Sunday
throughout the year. The walls themselves were scrupulously whitewashed;
the ceilings were of heavy beams, supporting lighter cross-beams, on
which in turn thick boards were laid to carry the cement floor of the
room overhead.

Many hundred men-at-arms could be drawn up in the courtyards, and their
horses stalled in the spacious stables. The kitchens, usually situated
on the ground floor, were large enough to provide meals for half a
thousand retainers, if necessary; and the cellars and underground
prisons were a vast labyrinth of vaulted chambers, which not
unfrequently communicated with the Tiber by secret passages. In
restoring the palace of the Santacroce, a few years ago, a number of
skeletons were discovered, some still wearing armour, and all most
evidently the remains of men who had died violent deaths. One of them
was found with a dagger driven through the skull and helmet. The hand
that drove it must have been strong beyond the hands of common men.

The grand staircase led up from the sunny court to the state apartments,
such as they were in those days. There, at least, there were sometimes
carpets, luxuries of enormous value, and even before the Renascence the
white walls were hung with tapestries,