Tall, fluted columns, extremely slender and resembling the staffs
of the standards before the king's palace, sprang from the ground and
rose unbroken to the palm-leaved cornice, where swelled out, under a
simple cube, their lotus-flowered capitals.

The single story built above the ground-floor did not rise as high as
the mouldings which bordered the terraced roof, and thus left an empty
space between the ceiling and the flat roof of the villa. Short, small
pillars, with flowery capitals, divided into groups of four by the tall
columns, formed an open gallery around this aerial apartment open to
every wind.

Windows broader at the base than at the top of the opening, in
accordance with the Egyptian style, and closed with double sashes,
lighted the first story. The ground-floor was lighted by narrower
windows placed closer to each other.

Above the door, which was adorned with deep mouldings, was a cross
planted in a heart and framed in a parallelogram cut in the lower part
to allow the sign of favourable omen to pass; the meaning being, as
every one knows, "A good house."

The whole building was painted in soft, pleasant colours; the lotus of
the capitals showed alternately red and blue in the green capsules; the
gilded palm-leaves of the cornices stood out upon a blue background; the
white walls of the facades set off the painted framework of the windows,
and lines of red and green outlined panels and imitated the joints of
the stone.

Outside the enclosing wall, which was built flush with the dwelling,
stood a row of trees cut to a point, which formed a screen against the
dusty southern wind, always laden with the desert heat.

In front of the building grew a vast vineyard. Stone shafts with lotus
capitals placed at symmetrical distances outlined, through the vineyard,
walks cutting each other at right angles. Boughs of vine leaves joined
one plant to another and formed a succession of leafy arches under which
one could walk erect. The ground, carefully raked and heaped up at the
foot of each plant, contrasted by its brown colour with the bright green
of the leaves, amid which played the sunbeams and the breeze.

On either side of the building two oblong pools bore upon their
transparent surface aquatic birds and flowers. At the corners of these
pools four great palm-trees spread out fanwise their green wreath of
leaves at the top of their scaly trunks.

Compartments, regularly traced by narrow paths, divide