"It's the vision of a painter who is also a poet, worked out in terms of architecture. Maybeck planned it all, even to the details. He wanted to suggest a splendid ruin, suddenly come upon by travelers, after a long journey in a desert. He has invested the whole place with an atmosphere of tragedy. It's Roman in feeling and Greek in the refinement of its ornamentation. That rotunda reminds one of the Pantheon in Rome. Those Corinthian columns, with the melancholy drooping of the acanthus and the fretwork and the frieze, by Zimm, are suggestive of Greece. Maybeck says that his mind was started on the conception, 'The Island of Death,' by Boecklin, the painting that the German people know so well as the 'Todteninsel,' and by 'The Chariot Race,' of Gerome." The architect went on to say that the resemblance was remote and chiefly interesting as showing how a great artist could carry a suggestion into an entirely new realm. The Boecklin painting merely suggested the general scope of the work, and the chariot race gave the hint for that colonnade, which Maybeck had made so original and graceful by the use of the urns on top of groups of columns with the figure of a woman at each corner. He had used that somewhat eccentric scheme on account of its pictorial charm. All through the construction Maybeck had defied the architectural conventions; but he had been justified by his success. My attention was directed to a group of columns at the end of the colonnade. "There's just a hint of the Roman Forum over there. Perhaps it's accidental. Perhaps it's developed from a picture way down in Maybeck's consciousness. However, the idea of putting two columns together in just that way comes from the French Renaissance. The great French architect, Perrault, used it in the Louvre. In the competition he won out over Bernini, who is living again in the Court of the Universe. It gives great architectural richness." People had wondered what McLaren had meant to indicate by the high hedges he had made over there with his dew plant. He had merely carried out the designs put into his hands. Maybeck had intended the hedge to be used as a background for willow trees that were to run up as high as the frieze, in this way gaining depth. Through those trees the rotunda was to be glimpsed. Willow trees, with overhanging boughs, were also to be planted along the edge of the lagoon, the water running under the leaves and disappearing. In the lagoon swans were swimming and arching their long necks. "The old Greeks and Romans would have loved this scene, though they would, of course, have found alien influences here," said the architect. "They would have enjoyed the sequestration of the Palace, its being set apart, giving the impression of loneliness. The architects were shrewd in making the approach long and circuitous." "They might have done more with the water that was here before they filled in," I said. "It offered fine chances."