A grand staircase supported by
agonised colossi, grinning and writhing in vain efforts to look as if they
didn't mind the weight, led from the great hall to the state apartments;
and in these rooms the bad taste of the building may be said to have
culminated. Here were mirrors framed in meaningless arabesques, cornices
painted to represent bas-reliefs, consoles and pilasters of mock marble,
and long generations of Electors in the tawdriest style of portraiture, all
at full length, all in their robes of office, and all too evidently by one
and the same hand. To me, however, they were all majestic and beautiful. I
believed in themselves, their wigs, their armour, their ermine, their
high-heeled shoes and their stereotyped smirk, from the earliest to the
latest.
But the gardens and grounds were my chief delight, as indeed they were the
main attraction of the place, making it the focus of a holiday resort for
the townsfolk of Cologne and Bonn, and a point of interest for travellers.
First came a great gravelled terrace upon which the ground-floor windows
opened--a terrace where the sun shone more fiercely than elsewhere, and
orange-trees in tubs bore golden fruit, and great green, yellow, and
striped pumpkins, alternating with beds of brilliant white and scarlet
geraniums, lay lazily sprawling in the sunshine as if they enjoyed it.
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