Gothic gate in some old corner of Rouen, or even Canterbury.
In twenty such places in the town one may see the details that
appeal to the same associations, so different and so distant.
One may see that angular dogtooth ornament that makes the round
Norman gateways look like the gaping mouths of sharks.
One may see the pointed niches in the walls, shaped like windows
and serving somewhat the purpose of brackets, on which were
to stand sacred images possibly removed by the Moslems.
One may come upon a small court planted with ornamental trees
with some monument in the centre, which makes the precise impression
of something in a small French town. There are no Gothic spires,
but there are numberless Gothic doors and windows; and he who
first strikes the place at this angle, as it were, may well feel
the Northern element as native and the Eastern element as intrusive.
While I was thinking all these things, something happened which in
that place was almost a portent.

It was very cold; and there were curious colours in the sky.
There had been chilly rains from time to time; and the whole
air seemed to have taken on something sharper than a chill.
It was as if a door had been opened in the northern corner of the heavens;
letting in something that changed all the face of the earth.
Great grey clouds with haloes of lurid pearl and pale-green were coming
up from the plains or the sea and spreading over the towers of the city.
In the middle of the moving mass of grey vapours was a splash
of paler vapour; a wan white cloud whose white seemed somehow more
ominous than gloom. It went over the high citadel like a white
wild goose flying; and a few white feathers fell.

It was the snow; and it snowed day and night until that Eastern