A big gray wall stretched out, the frigid facade of a State establishment, and it was through a quiet, simple, unobtrusive little doorway at the end of this wall that La Couteau went in with the child.

On Easter Sunday, when the Pope celebrates high mass in the church of St Peter's, the Papal noble Guard, composed of young men from the principal families in Rome, form a hedge on each side of the nave of the church, from the entrance of the facade to the grand altar.

There, facing the avenue, was the sumptuous Renaissance facade with eight lofty windows on each of its upper floors; there, inside, was the hall, all bronze and marble, conducting to the spacious ground-floor reception-rooms which a winter garden prolonged; and there, up above, occupying all the central part of the first floor, was Seguin's former "cabinet," the vast apartment with lofty windows of old stained glass.

All through the late seventies, while his brothers and sisters were clinging sentimentally to brownstone fronts in Stuyvesant Square or red-brick facades in Great Jones Street, Mr. Lanley himself, unaffected by recollections of Uncle Joel's death or grandma's marriage, had been parting with his share in such properties, and investing along the east side of the park.

The grand facade towards the garden extends 330 feet, and that towards the Thames 328 feet.