Pagina 233 de 788

From the gable protruded the edges of a balcony, supported on a

row of close-set wooden columns; the columns, which were a great

architectural marvel, were solid, though half decayed, and were

put up crooked, as in the tower of Pisa; they did not conform to

Greek models, for they lacked bases and capitals. On the columns

rested semicircular arches, also of wood, in imitation of Gothic

art. Above were artistic ornaments, crooked as the arms of

Sabbath candlesticks,69 executed not with the graver or chisel,

but with skilful blows of the carpenter's hatchet; at their ends

hung balls, somewhat resembling the buttons that the Jews hang on

their foreheads when they pray, and which, in their own, tongue,

they call cyces. In a word, from a distance the tottering,

crooked tavern was like a Jew, when he nods his head in prayer;

the roof is his cap, the disordered thatch his beard, the smoky,

dirty walls his black frock, and in front the carving juts out

like the cyces on his brow.