here they both as well as Zbyszko forgot for a while about danger in the
presence of the wonders they saw before them. In Lithuania and on the
frontier, they had only seen single castles, and the only city of any
importance which they knew was Wilno, a badly built and ruined town; but
here many of the merchants' houses were more magnificent than the grand
duke's palace in Lithuania. It is true that there were many wooden
houses; but even these astonished them by the loftiness of their walls
and roofs; also by the windows, made of glass balls, set in lead which so
reflected the rays of the setting sun, that one would imagine that there
was fire in the houses. In the streets near the market place, there were
many highly ornamented houses of red brick, or of stone. They stood side
by side like soldiers; some of them, broad; others, narrow; but all lofty
with vaulted halls, very often having the sign of the Passion of our Lord
Jesus Christ or an image of the Most Holy Virgin over the door. There
were some streets, on which one could see two rows of houses, over them a
stripe of blue sky, between them, a road paved with stones; and on both
sides as far as one could see stores and stores. These were full of the
best foreign goods, at which being accustomed to war and the capture of
booty, Macko looked with a longing eye. But both were still more
astonished at the sight of the public buildings; the church of Panna
Maryia on the square; the _sukiennice_;[38] the city hall with its
gigantic cellar, in which they were selling beer from Swidnica; other
churches, depots of broadcloth, the enormous "_mercatorium_," devoted to
the use of foreign merchants; then a building in which were the public
scales, bath houses, cooper works, wax works, silver works, gold works,
breweries, the mountains of barrels round the so-called Schrotamto,--in a
word, riches which a man not familiar with the city, even though a
well-to-do possessor of a _grodek_, could not even imagine.

Powala conducted Macko and Zbyszko to his house situated on Saint Anna