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“It is all arranged,” said Mr. Lupi.

Our route took us westward toward the Spanish frontier and then north to Alcobaco [[Alcobaça]]. In its principal store, Casa Trinidade, we found masses of printed cloth, palm leaf furniture, and craft works not to be found anywhere else in the world. Outside Braga is the ancient University city of Coimbra. We were taken into the magnificent library where, our guide said, there are 500,000 volumes, many of them very rare books. But what made us stare were two reading rooms, one entirely in green lacquer, the other in red lacquer. It might seem that such color would interfere with a student trying to concentrate on a book, but they were not obtrusive. If anything, they were an aid to concentration. The architecture interested me because of the use of so much inlay. A black wall was inlaid with countless white pebbles inlaid in patterns. The effect seemed some what ginger-