The most patriotic were relying on the inspiration of native architects who had invented a Catalan art with pointed arches, battlements, and ducal coronets.

These medieval coronets, which were repeated even on the peaks of the chimney pots, were the everlasting decorative motif of an industrial city little given to dreams and lusting for lucre.
Ferragut advanced through the solitary street between two rows of freshly transplanted trees that were just sending forth their first growth.

He looked at the facades of the _torres_ made of blocks of cement imitating the stone of the old fortresses, or with tiles which represented fantastic landscapes, absurd flowers, bluish, glazed nymphs.
Upon getting out of the street car he made a resolution.

He would look at the outside only of the house.

Perhaps that would aid him in discovering the woman! Then he would just continue on his way.
But on reaching the _torre_, whose number he still kept in mind, and pausing a few seconds before its architecture of a feudal castle whose interior was probably like that of the beer gardens, he saw the door opening, and appearing in it the same woman that had talked with him in the flower Rambla.
"Come in, Captain." And the captain was not able to resist the suggestive smile of the cook.
He found himself in a kind of hall similar to the facade with a Gothic fireplace of alabaster imitating oak, great jars of porcelain, pipes the size of walking-sticks, and old armor adorning the walls.